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THE CALVERT SERIES 
HILAIRE, BELLOc, General Editor 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


THE CALVERT SERIES 


HitarrE Bextoc, General Editor 


et 


Belloc: THe CaTHoLic CHURCH AND HISTORY 
Chesterton: ‘THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION 
McNabb: THe CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY 
Ward ; THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE APPEAL TO REASON 


Windle: Tue Catuoric CHURCH AND ITs REACTIONS 
WITH SCIENCE 


ae eA TOMI: ChiWhCrH 
AND HISTORY 









TaN 1 ie g?/ 
Ye w 

occa sews 
BY 


HILAIRE BELLOC 


NEW YORK 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1926 


All Rights Reserved 


Nihil Obstat 


ARTHUR Ji7*SCANUAN, S:51. D,; 
Censor Librorum. 


Imprimatur 


PATRICK CARDINAL HAYES 
% Archbishop, New York. 


New York, September 16, 1926. 


Copyright, 1926, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. 
Published November, 1926. 





Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


PREFACE 


The object of the author has oeen to state and 
summarise in a brief, succinct form the arguments 
drawn from History in opposition to the claim of 
the Catholic Church: that is, to the claim put for- 
ward by that Church to speak with Divine and 
Infallible Authority. The author insists upon the 
point that he is not attempting a positive apologetic 
drawn from History in favour of this claim, but a 
rebutting of the evidence drawn from History op- 
posed to this claim. He is engaged in examining 
the value of the arguments drawn from History to 
prove that the Catholic Church has varied or erred 
in her teaching or has made it depend upon immoral 
methods, and in showing that they have no force. 

The little book is divided into two parts, the 
first dealing with the three moral arguments: 
(1) that the Church has made pronouncements 
which History can prove to be false; (2) that the 
Church, being proved by History to be not only 
material which she knew to be false; (3) that the 
Church, being proved by history to be not only 

5 


6 PREFACE 


organised but increasingly organised from the be- 
ginning of its existence, is thereby shown to be 
different from the simple thing which a divine insti- 
tution of the sort should be. 

Secondly, the intellectual argument, to wit, that 
the Church can be proved by History to be man- 
made, not God-made. This the author divides into 
two sections: (1) the Protestant argument that 
there was some original good message told by Jesus 
Christ, which the Church has gradually corrupted 
and from the origin of which she has deviated; 
(2) the general agnostic argument that the Church 
can be proved historically to be but one of many 
religions, to have grown up like any other religion, 
with the same illusions and similar rites and mys- — 
teries, and is therefore man-made—which last form 
of attack the author regards as to-day by far the 
most serious. 


EDITOR’S PREFACE 


There needs but a brief introduction from the 
same pen as that which composed the essay which 
follows it. 

It must be to this effect. 

The general subject ‘““The Catholic Church and 
History’’ might be treated from a hundred differ- 
ent positions. Perhaps the most important in the 
eyes of the cultured man of our day is the ques- 
tion whether the Catholic Church is, or is not, 
proved by the general story of European history 
for the last two thousand years to have been a 
beneficent influence. That question, however, I 
cannot touch upon because the question whether 
the Church be beneficent or no is, to a Catholic, 
subsidiary to the point whether its claim to be 
the very truth is valid or no. If this claim is justti- 
fied, then certainly the Church must be beneficent. 
If it be proved beneficent, that will indeed be some 
support of its claim; but a weak one, because we 
cannot even judge whether it be beneficent or no 
until we have decided what we think better and 
what worse—and this issue cannot be decided until 
we are certain of our philosophy, that is, of our 


religion, 
7 


8 EDITOR’S PREFACE 


It is another and more important point to dis- 
cuss whether the Church in her long history has, 
or has not, shown exceptional signs of holiness:and 
of supernatural power, which are an evidence of her 
claim. ‘There are also, as I have said, very many 
other points of discussion which the general title 
suggests. | 

I have confined myself to one, and one only, to 
wit, the rebutting of a certain argument drawn from 
History against the Church. I have done so for 
the reason that, in my eyes at least, much the most 
formidable assault delivered against the Catholic 
Church to-day is the assault delivered from the 
historical argument. “There remains (as I have said 
in the Essay that follows) much of the old Prot- 
estant argument, to wit, that an original excellent 
establishment or message of divine origin was 
corrupted in the course of the centuries and that 
the Roman Communion still defends that corrup- 
tion, so that its claim to authority fails. “This I 
have attempted to meet. But of far more weight 
in my judgment, at the present moment, is the gen- 
eral argument that, regarding History as a whole 
and adding to it what little we can guess, and what 
very little we positively know, about man before 


EDITOR’S PREFACE 9 


he began to establish records, the Faith is but an 
illusion, parallel to many another such illusion to 
which men have been subject by the process of pro- 
jecting their own imaginations upon the void of 
the universe. 

This I am convinced is the chief attack which 
we of the Faith have to meet in modern times. The 
modern white world, the world of the European 
races and their oversea expansion, is rapidly be- 
coming divided jinto two fairly definite camps: 
those who accept the full mission of the Catholic 
Church and those who are convinced, by the study 
of geology and recorded History, that the Catholic 
Church is but one more example of man’s power of 
self-delusion. 

Two questions may be asked of me by those 
who should read the analysis which makes up my 
booklet. First, why have I confined myself to 
rebutting, that is, to a negative position, instead of 
advancing positive evidence from History in favor 
of the Catholic claim (evidence drawn from holi- 
ness, continuity, unity, etc.)? Secondly, why have 
I given but a portion, and not the largest portion, 
of my space to what I have called the most im- 
portant part of the attack, to wit, the attack from 


10 EDITOR’S PREFACE 


general pre-History and History, the purely Scep- 
tical attack which I deal with at the end of my 
Essay? My answer to these two questions is as 
follows: ; 

First, that, in my judgment, the action of the 
Catholic Church is here a defensive action. The 
opponent takes it for granted that History and pre- 
History disprove the Catholic claim. He must be 
met as one attacking. 

Secondly, that though the general Sceptical at- 
tack is by far the more important, yet it needs less 
space in writing for the meeting of it than does 
the discussion of the old Protestant attitude. The 
reason is that the issue between the Faith and mere 
scepticism is narrower and sharper, and at the same 
time more general. If you are debating whether 
the Church declined or was corrupted you must 
go into more historical detail. "You must in some 
degree, even in so short an essay as this, be concrete. 
But on the other and larger issue you have a very 
simple and direct “‘yes’’ or “‘no’’; which is, briefly, 
the answer to that old, eternal question ““whether 
religion be from God or from man’’; and upon the 
answer to that question depends the future of our 
civilisation.—T he Editor. 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 





THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 
I 


1. By the term ‘“The Church” I mean the Cath- 
olic Church; and by the Catholic Church I mean 
that visible society real, one, and clearly present 
before the world to-day, which is in communion 
with the Apostolic See of Rome, and accepts not 
only the supremacy of that see but also the Infalli- 
bility of its occupant when, as shepherd and teacher 
of all Christians, and speaking in that capacity, he 
defines a matter in faith or morals. 

2. The Church claims Divine Authority. She 
says: 

“T alone know fully and teach those truths essen- 
tial to the life and final happiness of the soul. I 
alone am that Society wherein the human spirit 
reposes in its native place; for I alone stand in the 
centre whence all is seen in proportion and whence 
the chaotic perspective of things falls into right 
order. Mankind cannot feed upon itself—for that 
is death at last. I alone provide external sustenance 


from that which made mankind. ‘The soil of my 
13 


14. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


country alone can fully nourish mankind. Here, 
in me, alone is reality. For I alone am not man- 
made but am of direct divine foundation and am 
by my divine Founder perpetually maintained.”’ 


3. Against this claim many forms of rejection 
are found, each with its type of argument: as, that 


the claim conflicts with the ascertained results of 
Physical Science: that it advances a particular affir- 
mation not based on the only proofs admissible by 
reason: that the objector discovers in the Church 
not the marks of holiness which should accom aay 
such a claim, but rather of evil, etc. 

Among the chief objections is the objection from 
History. It is affirmed that the records of the past, 
the better they are known and the more closely 
they are examined, make the more certainly for the 
rejection of the Church’s claim to Divine Authority, 
to unique inspiration. These records (it is affirmed) 
show the Church to be of merely human origin. 
They yield manifold evidence that illusion, myth 
and even craft have built up her structure. Her 
rites are of the kind imagined by men in all ages 
and places wherever men have abandoned them- 
selves to emotional images divorced from reason. 
Her doctrines are spun out of nothingness by men 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 15 


engaged upon mere systems invented to explain 
irrational statements. Her objects of worship are 
but projections of the worshipper’s mind and have 
no real existence. 

History, it is said, can prove all this. We can 
trace illusion growing from step to step: the 
mythical and legendary gradually accepted for fact; 
the doubtful, vague, uncertain, tentative dream 
hardening into fixed and absurd dogma. Supposed 
contemporary evidence, enlightened History with 
modern apparatus, proved to be subsequent inter- 
polations. The writings traditionally ascribed to 
Witnesses turn out—under the examination of His- 
tory—to be of a very different and later date. 
Beyond all this and clinching the argument is the 
discovery through History that men have always 
thus created for themselves wholly fanciful beings 
whom they have worshipped always in much the 
same fashions. ‘There has been a long process of 
self-deception from which humanity in its advance 
is gradually freeing itself, and in this process the 
Catholic Church is but the last phase. 

It is this objection, the argument from History, 
that I propose to refute. Certain other of the main 
objections—the objection from Reason, the objec- 


16 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


tion from Philosophy, the objection from Physical 
Science—are dealt with in other works in this series. 
I am dealing with the historical objection alone. I 
propose to show, not that History may convince 
any man of the Church’s claim, but that the sup- 
posed argument from History against that claim 
has failed. I propose to enquire upon the validity 
of the objection from History. 


Tay 

Premises must precede such an enquiry. I lay 
them down as follows: 

(1) The refutation of any argument against the 
Faith is not a demonstration of the truth of the 
Faith. It is the removal only of an obstacle to the 
Faith. For the Faith is not arrived at by demon- 
stration, but by demonstration it is shown to be at 
least tenable. “The Faith is not a conclusion which 
all can reach by the formal action of reason, but a 


revelation to be defended by reason. ‘The Faith is 
not a theory, but a thing. It is rational, but not 


deductively arrived at. “There is no process whereby 
all mankind can be convinced of it as of an abstract 
proposition. But there is a process whereby all 
mankind can be convinced that each particular 
proposition against it has failed. 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 17 


This principle in what is called “Apologetics” 
(that is, writings in defence of Catholic truth) is 
so generally neglected that it is of the first import- 
ance to make it quite clear at the opening of any 
discussion upon revealed religion. 

A man who can see colours will never be able to 
prove colour to a colour-blind man. He can show 
that the colour-blind man’s arguments—e.g., that 
colours do not exist because if they did they would 
affect surface—are false. If he proceeds to estab- 
lish the presence of colours positively, he must do 
so by analogy, by convergent evidence, by the mani- 
fest action of others, by the proved nature of other 
senses than that of sight. He can only prove (in 
the strict deductive sense of the word “prove’’) 
that the sense of colour is rational, acceptable with- 
out violence to the human mind; but that it is 
present he must establish by other methods. 


Nearly all our modern debates in this matter are 
confused by the fact that one of the parties miscon- 


ceives the nature of these debates. The opponent 
of Catholicism thinks that its apologist is, in argu- 
ing, trying to prove Catholic truth as one proves 
a case for a positive verdict. He is not. He is 
rebutting the supposed value of opposing evidence; 


18 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


he is pleading for a negative verdict; for acquittal 
of the charge “‘irrational.’’ When he comes to es- 
tablishing the Faith positively, he does not do so by 
following one line of deductive reason, but by a 
mass of converging considerations. 

History cannot be said to prove the Faith, save 
in the very extended use of the word “‘prove’’ to 
mean a general process of increasing conviction 
from the examination of what is revealed of the 
Church’s action on the world, of men’s attitude 
towards it, of the moral and intellectual activities 
of acceptors and rejectors compared. But it can be 
proved that an increasing knowledge of History 
does not shake the Church’s claim to Divine 
Authority: while, on the contrary, a lesser knowl- - 
edge is almost invariably more hostile to that 
authority than a greater. | 

(2) I have used the term “reason,” and this 
leads me to my second premise: “he human reason 
is absolute in its own sphere. 

That elementary truth is often denied to-day 
(though the minds which deny it can only use 
reason to arrive at this very conclusion!), but it is 
fundamental and I must postulate it as a necessary 
prelude to any discussion. For to argue with men 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 19 


who deny the basis of all argument is futile; it is 
like pleading in a court where the judge is a corpse 
and the jury a set of waxworks. 

A man says, “The river Ohio flows eastwards.” 
I show by the compass, the map, and the sun, or in 
any other rational way you like that it flows west- 
ward. If he then answer me, ‘‘Oh! that is formal 
logic—I have no use for it! Westward and east- 
ward are but apparent contradictories. They can 
be resolved into a higher unity. And, after all, 
what is ‘flowing’? And here is a bend of the river 
which does flow eastward for a mile or two. And 
a statement may well be true in a higher sense 
than the geographical one. And anyhow, the 
modern mind is no longer bound by the mediaeval 
fetters of dialectic’’—if he replies with this sort of 
rigmarole, I must leave him to it. I am writing 
not for modernists—that is, not for people who 
think that a proposition can be both true and 
untrue at the same time—but for men of sane tra- 
dition who admit logic as a court of final appeal in 
things of the mind. For we Catholics regard reason © 
as supreme in its own sphere and will admit nothing 
contrary to reason. 

(3) Lastly, I must premise that we are discuss- 


20 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY » 


ing things as they are: the real Catholic Church; 
and are excluding from the discussion what is not 
germane to it. We are discussing the claim of the 
Catholic Church to authority, the claims of its 
accredited organs to express divine truth—not what 
some opponent may in ignorance regard as an 
accredited organ of the Catholic Church, when it 
is nothing of the kind, nor a supposed doctrine of 
the Church which the Church has never taught. 
Conversely, I do not admit as rebutting evidence 
such phrases as “‘all the best authorities’ or “‘all the 
latest authorities’’—they are worthless as evidence. 
I examine the grounds on which the affirmations 
are made, not the mere affirmation unsupported by | 
anything but fashion. (Thus, if an opponent ad- 
vance, ‘“‘Marcus, a priest, said the earth was flat: it 
is proved round; therefore the Catholic Church was 
wrong,’ it is replied that Marcus, a priest, is not 
the Catholic Church. Or if it be said, ““The Catho- 
lic Church teaches that mankind is but six thousand 
years old,’’ it is answered, “‘Many heretical sects 
have taught this but the Catholic Church has never 
taught it.”” Or if it be said, ‘““The Catholic Church 
affirms the witness of the fourth Gospel but all rea- 
soning men admit that it is spurious,”’ it is replied, 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 2] 


“All reasoning men do not admit that it is spuri- 
ous: that is but the affirmation of a fashionable 
school.’’) 

7 III 


We must begin by establishing the main sections 
into which is divided the argument from History 
against the claims of the Catholic Church. 

But before setting out these sections in their order 
I must reject one as having no relation to the dis- 
cussion, though often confused with it: I mean the 
so-called historical argument from material pros- 
perity. | 

It is advanced that the claim of the Catholic 
Church to Divine Authority is negatived by a 
proved historical process whereby societies rejecting 
the Church’s claim are blessed with material pros- 
perity, while societies accepting that claim become 
poor. 

Such an argument no more applies to societies in 
their relation to the Church’s authority than it does 
to individuals in relation to the authority of their 
own conscience or of their own reason. My con- 
viction that a course of action is morally right, or 
that a given statement is intellectually true, is not 
to be tested by its effect upon my income. In point 


22 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


of fact, the argument is as worthless in its pre- 
sumptions as in its reasoning. ‘The historical affir- 
mation is historically false. It is not true that 
societies have risen in wealth through the rejection 
of the Catholic Faith, or fallen in wealth through 
the retention of it. “The two phenomena are not 
correlated in History at all, and there is as much to 
be set upon the one side of the account in this brief 
two hundred years over which the rises and falls 
extend as on the other. 

But even were the statement true, the application 
of it would be clearly beside the mark: even had 
every Catholic society fallen into penury and every 
anti-Catholic risen to affluence, it would be utterly — 
without bearing upon the truth or falsehood of the 
Catholic claim. | 

This being said, what are the respectable and 
historical arguments against the Faith? What are 
those arguments drawn from History of which the 
intelligent man must take serious notice? They 
would seem to fall into two categories: 

The first argument I will call the minor argu- 
ment, because it appeals only to the moral sense— 
not that the moral sense is less than the intellectual, 
but that in weighing questions of material evidence 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 23 


(which is the matter of History) a moral test takes 
the second place. “Thus, in a court of justice evi- 
dence to character, though of weight, counts less in 
establishing a man’s claim than material evidence. 
Next I find, and much more cogent, a major argu- 
ment, which is directly concerned with the intellec- 
tual facilities of man. 

(1) The minor, or moral argument, as I have 
called it, is directed against the character of the 
Church, and attempts to show from History that 
her character is not consonant with her claims. It 
has many forms: accusations of cruelty, of unsocial 
neglect in material things, etc., but the main head- 
ings are three: 

(a) The Church has been historically confident 
upon and has affirmed as truths a number of points 
since proved to be erroneous: a Divine Authority 
would never go wrong upon any point. 

(b) The Church has relied on falsehoods and 
propagated them after she had known them to be 
falsehoods, and has not abandoned them until she 
was compelled to abandon them by the overwhelm- 
ing weight of evidence. No Divine Authority 
would act in this fashion. 

(c) The Church is highly organised and has 


24 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


apparently always shown organisation: such organ- 

,isation has developed more and more from the 
beginning, or at any rate from a very early stage 
indeed. The Church is a body whose doctrines, 
institutions and structure have perpetually pro- 
ceeded from the simpler to the more complex and 
from the less to the more defined. Nothing pos- 
sessing divine inspiration would be organised, for 
organisation is mechanical and is of death: inspira- 
tion, which is of life, remains free, at large, untram- 
melled by rule. 

(II) What I have called the major, intellectual 
argument, which is much the more serious in all 
our debate, stands thus: 

The Church is man-made, as can be seen by the 
appearance over and over again in History of a doc- 
trine or a practice unknown to an earlier epoch, 
and more largely, by a comparison between all 
religions; for the Church, which seemed a unique 
phenomenon to the lesser historical knowledge of 
our fathers, is now discovered to be but one of 
many similar phenomena, one of many religions, 
with rites and doctrines not indeed identical (they 
differ widely), but all having parts in common and 
all presumably of human institution. Therefore 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 25 


the Church must be included in the character of all 
religions: it is but one of many and man-made like 
the rest. 

But this major, intellectual argument falls into 
two very distinct branches, which I will call the 


Protestant and the purely Sceptical. 
(a) The Protestant appeal to History takes the 


form of saying: ““The Christian revelation is indeed 
divine, but at some period (earlier or later, accord- 
ing to the views of the disputant) it was corrupted 
by man-made accretions and illusions. History is 
therefore opposed to the Catholic Church: for His- 
tory bears witness to the fact that the Catholic 
Church as we know it is essentially man-made. But 
there does underlie it some divine foundation, some 
moral revelation not man-made.’ (The limits of 
this acceptable minimum each individual disputant 
fixes for himself.) 

(b) The Sceptical appeal to History—much the 
most formidable to-day, and always intellectually 
the most respectable—speaks in much bolder tones, 
thus: ““The whole of the Catholic Faith from be- 
ginning to end is man-made. It is a mass of illu- 
sions: of projections of the human mind thrown 
by the human imagination upon the void; of decep- 


26 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


tions, some of them conscious in some degree, many 
more but half-conscious; by far the most uncon- 
scious, implanted in the mind by early training. 
What the Catholic Church affirms is false from 
beginning to end, and History shows that the 
affirmations of the Catholic Faith have been thus 
man-made step by step from the very first origins 
we can discover. “The idea of a God is man-made; 
so is the sacramental idea, the idea of Incarnation— 
the whole affair. 

Such, as it seems to me, are the historical argu- 
ments against the claim of the Catholic Church to 
Divine Authority. “Those arguments, tabulated in 
the order of their importance, that is, of the power 
they wield over a rational human mind fully open 
to evidence and to approaches of reason, I will here 


set down in graphic form: 
I propose therefore to deal with them in their 


order, beginning with the least and going on to the 
greatest. 
IV 
(I) THE Minor or MoraL ARGUMENT 
(a) That the Church has been historically 
wrong upon a number of facts: a Divine Authority 
would not go wrong in this fashion. 


History shows the Cath- 
olic claim to Divine 
Authority to be false, 
by: 


I. The Minor or Moral Argu- 
ment from History against 
the Catholic claim to 


; which says that 
Divine Authority. 


II. The Major or Intellectual 
argument from History 
against the Catholic claim 
to Divine Authority. 


which says that 


(a) The Catholic Church has 
taught things later proved 
erroneous —- which no Divine 
Authority would do. 


(b) The Catholic Church has 
taught things erroneous after 
she knew them to be erroneous 
—which no Divine Authority 
would do. 


(c) The Catholic Church is 
highly and increasingly organ- 
ised—which no Divinely Au- 
thorised body would be. 


(a) (Protestant) The Catholic 
Church can be historically 
proved a mass of man-made 
accretions upon an_ original 
basis morally true. 


(b) (Sceptical or Pagan) The 
Catholic Church can be his- 
torically proved to be wholly 
man-made in all its structure. 


27, 


28 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


We begin by defining what we mean by the 
words ‘“‘the Church,” or that body of pronounce- 
ment by the Church which we call “‘the Faith.” 

Manifestly, a corporate authority is not respon- 
sible for pronouncements on which it has allowed 
divergence: manifestly, again, such an authority is 
not responsible for pronouncements on which it has 
allowed change without protest. Manifestly, it is 
not responsible for pronouncements made not by 
itself through its admitted organs of universal 
affirmation, but by certain of its body acting as 
individuals or even as parts. 

I use the word “‘manifestly.”” This may seem 
too strong a term in the ears of those who have 
heard precisely these false arguments repeated so 
often that the statement of their falsity sounds 
novel and strange. 

But if we examine the propositions closely, we 
shall see that this word “‘manifestly’’ exactly and 
inevitably applies in the three cases. 

A particular body makes the awful claim to 
Divine Authority and Infallibility. That claim 
may be false, and even ridiculous: but “‘manifestly”’ 
it could not at the same time make the claim and 
make an absolutely contradictory claim. For the 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 29 


word “‘body”’ substitute the word “‘man’’; let us 
suppose a particular man to come forward and say, 
“I have Divine Authority to teach. On matters 
essential to ultimate human happiness I can give 
replies which are infallibly true.”’ If such a man 
were asked, ‘““What do you think the weather will 
be to-morrow?” or “‘What was the date of the 
Battle of Hastings?’’ and he were to answer, ““Uhe 
weather may be this or that,’’ or “I cannot tell you 
when the Battle of Hastings was fought, but I seem 
to remember that it was on such and such a date,” 
he is not, when making such replies, acting within 
the framework of his tremendous claim. If you 
say, “A man making such a claim ought never to 
speak at all upon any subject save as an infallible 
authority,’’ you are pre-supposing non-human con- 
ditions. “There is no sort of reason why such a man 
should not admit his doubts or his ignorance in 
things not pertinent to his authority. There is not 
even any reason why he should not say with regard 
to a particular proposition, ““You ask my definition 
in this matter: so far I have not defined it; but I 
warn you that when I do define it I shall claim my 
reply to be infallible.’’ If he so answer, then the 
hypotheses he may be examining in the interval 


30 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


may be numerous and even contradictory one to 
the other without their divergence affecting his 
claim. 

Tested by this very simple (and I think, con- 
clusive) parallel, the historical argument drawn 
from historical error attributable to the Church 
fails. If any man can give a particular instance in 
which a specific affirmation has been made by those 
organs of affirmation which the Church solemnly 
defines as hers, and can say what error, historically 
proved, has since attached to such an aWrmation, 
then he shall be met. But no man has brought for- 
ward such a case. 

What such affirmation is to be found? ‘The 
history is a long one; it extends over nearly two 
thousand years. It is not difficult at all, rather it 
is singularly easy and definite to say in any period, 
“Here was the Church, these were its accredited 
organs of expression, and this was a solemn affirma- 
tion of the Church, not of any individual or of any 
part.”’ or instance, you can read the acts of the 
first Council of Ephesus; it was cecumenical; it 
acted overtly under Papal authority. Can you give 
a point therein defined which has been proved since 
to be historically erroneous? or in the Council of 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 31 


Trent? or of the Fourth Lateran? or of the Vati- 
can? or of Nicra? In which of them have you an 
affirmation which History has disproved? ‘There is 
none. The more you contemplate that extraordi- 
nary historical phenomenon the more you will be 
astonished by it. But I do not advance it as a proof 
of the Church’s divine claim. I am here only con- 
cerned with the negative argument. ‘There has not 
been in point of fact any official affirmation pro- 
ceeding from the accredited organs of the Catholic 
Church—not one—from the beginning to the 
present day, which has received historical disproof. 

Here it may be objected that such affirmations, 
solemnly pronounced as the final decision of the 
Church, concern matters which are not of their 
nature susceptible of historical disproof; they con- 
cern such matters as the immortality of the soul, 
the personality of the Godhead, its triune quality, 
the Incarnation, etc. In other words, since the 
Church has not touched on historical matters but 
only on metaphysical, she has preserved herself 
from attack upon those lines. 

In point of fact, the argument is not strictly con- 
clusive, for there are exceptional points—for in- 
stance, the Resurrection—in which the Church 


32 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


might very well have been challenged by clear, 
overwhelming, multiple, historical proof—and it 
has not been so challenged. But take the contention 
for what it is (and in the main 1t is true) that the 
Church, not having dealt with History but with 
transcendental truth, has thus escaped historical 
error. It at least disposes of the historical argument 
against the Faith in that particular. We must under 
this particular head——a minor one I admit—accept 
the fact that the Faith has not proposed through its 
authoritative organs in any of its definitions of 
dogma something which History has disproved. 

But what of divergence, and what of change? 

As to divergence, the answer to me seems simple 
and brief. Where divergence is admitted, and so 
long as it is admitted, infallible pronouncement is 
neither claimed nor can be at work. The divergence 
is openly between the judgments or affirmations of 
individuals or of sections. If the Church, having 
definitely pronounced by the voice of her head and 
of any of the great councils with which he has been 
in communion and which have acted with his 
authority—the Council of Nicxa, for instance— 
something which in a later age the same authori- 
tative organs had to deny in the face of new his- 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 33 


torical evidence, then there would be a fundamental 
divergence and an historical argument against the 
claim to Divine Authority. I repeat, as I shall con- 
tinue to repeat throughout this brief essay, the 
essential point that the argument is negative. I am 
not affirming here, and for the moment, that such 
consistency is proof of the divinity of the claim— 
though it is certainly very remarkable; I am only 
pointing out that the consistency 1s present through- 
out History. You may say, if you will, that it is 
present because even a human corporation claiming 
infallibility would take great care never to contra- 
dict itself. Granted (though I think it would have 
its work cut out)! But at least it must be admitted 
that the consistency is there, and that, therefore, an 
historical argument drawn from inconsistency does 
not lie. 

Now what of the more formidable argument 
drawn from change? It is not to be doubted as an 
historical truth that in one era the general mood of 
Christians with regard to a particular point lay in 
one direction, in another era, in another. It is 
probable, for instance, that the early Church ex- 
pected the Second Advent in a more or less brief 
period. It is certain that many holy men, perhaps 


34 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


repeating the mood of their time, thought, in an 
earlier age, of the state of the dead as one of sleep 
awaiting the Resurrection, with no definition of the 
Particular Judgment, and so forth. In one period 
one devotion prevails; in another, another. One 
great doctrine is emphasised in one era; another ina 
later era. 

Here, then, is change. 

To which I answer that the change is never—has 
never been in any particular instance which any 
historian can find and point out—a change of doc- 
trine. ‘There has never been a definition, never a 
pronouncement, by any organ of the Church, say- 
ing ““This or that is so,’’ of which such changes of © 
mood have later compelled a retraction. 

Had we, for instance, in the early documents of 
the Church, a solemn, definite Apostolic statement 
that Our Lord would come back to earth in glory 
before the destruction of Jerusalem: had we any 
trace or echo of a protest raised by some who, dis- 
appointed in the delay of their hopes, laid their 
disappointment to the Apostles: had we any echo 
of voices in the Apostolic or sub-Apostolic period 


saying, “Since He has not come again we are de- 
ceived by the Church’’—then the particular case I 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 35 


have mentioned (and it is only one out of a great 
number) would be arguable. But we have none 
such. 

Had we a solemn pronouncement registered, as 
of the Faith, that the dead lay unliving and out of 
communion with us or with life as a whole from 
the moment of their passing to the Resurrection of 
the Flesh, then the statement that this was a con- 
tradiction with later defined doctrine on the Par- 
ticular Judgment and with our prayers for the dead, 
would be arguable. But there has been no such 
pronouncement. 

In other words, change, in the sense of change of 
vague mood, has no more historical weight in this 
department than the admitted divergence between 
individuals or sections upon matters undefined. 

Before authority has spoken, authority has not 
committed itself. When authority has spoken, con- 
tradiction must be established between itself and 
itself: or there is no historical argument against the 
claim of authority. You may say that there 
is no such argument only because authority is 
careful not to contradict itself. Well and good; but 
it remains true that the contradiction has not taken 
place; and that therefore the historical argument 


36 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


based upon it fails. When or if it shall apparently 
take place, there will be time to meet such an argu- 
ment in its apparent strength. But so far—and the 
period, remember, is one far longer than that 
attached to any other defined human institution— 
the argument does not apply. 

Now, though it is not logically connected with 
the strict process of reason I am here developing, 
may I not ask the reader rhetorically once more . 
whether that is not in his eyes a very singular 
phenomenon? 

Here is an organised corporation, a strict society, 
which has admittedly existed continuously for this 
prodigious length of time, through extreme vicissi- 
tudes of knowledge and of ignorance, through the 
most violent revolutions of human mood: a society 
which sprang up in the brilliant light of Pagan 
antiquity and of the half-divine Greek power of 
thought, and in the open majesty of the Empire, 
which persisted through the darkest periods of our 
material ignorance, which lived on through phases 
of gross popular credulity and equally gross alter- 
nate phases of popular scepticism; which has been 
bathed in the enthusiasm of the twelfth century, 
has gloried in the moral splendours of the thir- 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 37 


teenth, has struggled through the filth of our 
modern time; has suffered the splendid temptations 
of the Renaissance; has next found itself struggling 
with the base madnesses of Puritan assaults. 
Through such endless variety of circumstance it 
has remained consistent throughout that long, long 
term of centuries; centuries filled with every con- 
ceivable reaction of the human mind, with gusts of 
enthusiasm blowing from every point, each in exact 
contradiction to some other earlier one. “Through 
all these the institution which is historically the 
oldest and the most permanent of political human 
things cannot be discovered affected to change in 
any of its final pronouncements by these human 
changes. It cannot be discovered in a contradiction. 

That such a phenomenom—wholly unique in 
the story of mankind—should be of human origin 
is logically possible. It involves no contradiction 
in terms. An unbroken tradition of rigid caution, 
coupled with an unceasing consultation of record, 
might conceivably produce such consistency by 
human agency alone and as the result of human 
calculation. But the least we can say is that such 
an effect would be different from anything we know 
of men and of their actions. 


38 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


(b) That the Church has maintained error after 
Rnowing it to be error: that it has lied. 

The second charge under this head is that the 
Church has not only made, in good faith, errors 
which she has had to retract, but has actually relied 
on falsehood when she knew it to be falsehood and 
particularly in the case of errors originally com- 
mitted in good faith, but continued with the 
deliberate intention to deceive. No Divine Author- 
ity would do that. 

Now the value of such assertions—and they are 
frequently made—may be tested a fortiori, by 
taking the two principal classical examples upon 
which our opponents especially rely. It would be 
impossible to go over the whole category of these 
assertions, for they touch innumerable points. But 
since they all have in common one similar mis- 
understanding, it will suffice to examine two with 
perhaps a brief allusion to another. 

These two chief examples I take to be the Dona- 
tion of Constantine and the eternal Galileo case. 

Though in each case the wrongful assertion 
against the Faith is based on the same fundamental 
misunderstanding, yet each exemplifies one of the 
two separate chief types of that misunderstanding. 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 39 


The accusation in connection with the Donation of 
Constantine exemplifies the supposed deliberate use 
of forgery by the Church: the Galileo case exempli- 
fies her supposed tenacity in demonstrated error— 
an authority claiming infallibility and reluctant to 
admit that it has been clearly proved fallible. 

Let us see how these two test cases come out of a 
close examination. 

It is asserted in the case of the Donation of Con- 
stantine that this document was a forgery: that on 
that forgery was based a particular doctrine, to wit, 
the supremacy of the see of Peter: that when it was 
proved a falsehood the Church continued to defend 
it, and that, since her spokesmen were compelled at 
last to abandon it, with it there fell the necessary 
prop of the Papal contention. 

The Donation of Constantine is a document pur- 
porting to be a grant by the Emperor Constantine 
to Pope Sylvester, his contemporary, of civil juris- 
diction over the town of Rome; of temporal sov- 
ereignty over certain adjacent districts in Central 
Italy; of sundry ritual dignities in dress and public 
office; of the Lateran Palace for a residence in per- 
petuity; and with all this the recognition of the 


40 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over 
‘tthe universal Church. 

It first appeared about the time when the French 
Monarchy was supporting the Pope against his 
enemies and particularly against Byzantium, and 
when that monarchy was preparing the way for 
being declared the Empire of the West. It contains 
episodes which in a critical age would clearly stamp 
it as unauthentic. There is a ridiculous story of a 
dragon, for instance, which lived in a cave under 
the Capitol. The Emperor Constantine is repre- 
sented as receiving baptism from the hands of St. 
Sylvester before he moved his capital to Byzantium; 
whereas we now know that he did not receive 
baptism till long after, and then not from the Pope, 
but from an Eastern Bishop. It represents the 
Emperor as being cured by baptism of leprosy—a 
disease which he certainly never had—and as 
making the donation out of gratitude. 

The whole thing is manifestly mythical and 
legendary. But how does that false character affect 
the claim of the Church to infallibility in doctrine? 

‘To answer that question we must begin by grant- 
ing all those points, both doubtful and actually 
false, which our opponents advance as historical 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 41 


fact; for we shall see that even with the fullest 
admission of their imaginary facts, that case has not 
a leg to stand upon. 

They tell us that the document was a forgery 
(that is, a falsehood) produced with deliberate 
intent to support a novel claim upon the part of 
the Papacy. It isin fact nothing of the sort. It is 
a conglomeration of legend, arisen for the most part 
in Syria, the growth of which can be traced through 
the centuries. “The weight of evidence would show 
that it was accepted as true, not first in Rome, but 
in Northern France—the policy of whose monarch 
it exactly suited. It was first quoted, not in Rome, 
but in Rheims. It was not brought in to support 
the Papal claims even in temporal sovereignty, let 
alone in spiritual jurisdiction, till long after even 
the temporal claims had been universally admitted 
throughout the West, and the spiritual jurisdiction, 
of course, for centuries. “Though not authentic, it 
does contain an important substratum of truth. It 
is pretty evident that the Pope obtained increased 
jurisdiction in Rome after the transfer of Imperial 
authority to the East. It is virtually certain that 
the Lateran Palace became his official residence about 
the same time, and though we have not sufficient 


42 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


record of the steps whereby the Papal Government 
gradually came to administrate the Roman district 
in the place of the Byzantine Government, which 
had less and less real power there (especially after 
the Iconoclastic quarrel) , yet we do know that such 
jurisdiction was exercised long before we find any 
mention of the Donation. 

But, I repeat, for the purpose of my argument it 
is better to grant to our opponents not only what 
is doubtful, but what is certainly false in their sup- 
posed facts. Granted that the Donation was a 
forgery, that it had for its evil purpose the arti- 
ficial support of novel temporal powers in the see 
of Rome, and even of confirming the ancient and 
universally admitted spiritual supremacy: what 
then? How would such historical facts, if they 
were true (which they are not), militate against 
Catholic doctrine? Catholic doctrine in the matter 
may be very simply stated. You will find it ex- 
pressed everywhere by all competent authorities 
over a prodigious lapse of time in words almost 
identical; for it is as clear as it is brief. That doc- 
trine is as follows: 

Our Lord constituted the Apostolic College. Of 
that College he gave Peter the Primacy. This 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 43 


Primacy by divine constitution successively attached 
to the sees which Peter founded, first at Jerusalem, 
then at Antioch, finally at Rome. Its power lies not 
in the fact that Rome was the capital of the ancient 
world, but in the fact that St. Peter chose it for his 
final see. ‘This Primacy of the see of Rome is 
superior to, and more universal than, its patriarchate 
of the West. 

Now against that doctrine historical argument 
must show that Primacy was not recognised until 
the Donation, if the Donation be the argument in 
force. 

There are many other historical arguments, of 
course, brought to bear against the original Primacy 
of Rome; but I am examining the very strong 


example of the Donation as a test case. “Take any 
one of the innumerable textbooks in which the 


fixed and accredited doctrine is laid down, and 
examine the chain of evidence, not indeed as to the 
divine institution of the Papacy (for that is a mat- 
ter of faith, not of History), but as to the original 
Primacy of Rome, as admitted by Christians, which 
is a matter of History, not of faith. 

The chain reaches down to the very beginnings 
of our society. One of our most formidable op- 


44 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


ponents! puts what he calls the “‘first step in Papal 
aggression’”’ as early as St. Clement—that is, within 
a lifetime of the Crucifixion. Others may propose 
later dates; but no one with a pretence to elementary 
historical knowledge would postpone it to the ninth 
century, when the Donation of Constantine (in 
its present form) appeared. All Church history 
is full of Roman Primacy from the moment when 
Church history becomes open to detailed examina- 
tion. It is implied in the procedure of the earliest 
councils; it is openly alluded to in act after act, as 
the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries proceed. If 
you would call it a corruption, you must put the 
origin of that corruption very early; indeed, you 
will be compelled to put it within the lifetime of 
those who had talked familiarly with the Apostles 
and knew their mind and all the tradition of the 
very beginnings of the Church. The Donation of 
Constantine was no more the foundation of this 
Primacy of Rome than the Revolution of 1688 was 
the foundation of the House of Lords in England, 
or than Lincoln’s Presidential pronouncements dur- 
ing the Civil War were the foundation of the Presi- 
dency of the United States. 


* The Anglican authority and scholar, Dr. Lightfoot. 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 45 


But may it not be said that those who spoke for 
the Church as historians claimed the Donation to be 
authentic long after it had been questioned? Un- 
doubtedly they did. And it would have been 
astonishing, or rather incredible, if they had not, 
for everybody then thought the Donation genuine. 
But no doctrine was based on itt. In the same way 
everybody, Catholic and non-Catholic, accepts the 
ecclesiastical history of the Venerable Bede as 
genuine, and we use it in support of the connection 
between the English Church and Rome. But if it 
were proved a forgery to-morrow, the thesis of 
union between the English Church and Rome 
would remain. But they did not claim it after it 
had been definitely proved to be legendary; and the 
very fact that they officially admitted their error 
and confirmed their admission in final fashion is an 
excellent example of the difference between falli- 
bility as expressed in doctrinal falsehood and the 
misapprehension of historical fact. It is an excel- 
lent example of a universal truth present through- 
out all the history of the Church, that the Church 
brings reason to bear upon every problem, and 
regards reason in its own sphere as absolute. 

The first criticisms of the Donation are of the 


46 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


fifteenth century, coming from Peacock, Bishop of 
Chichester, and Valla in Italy. They make no pre- 
tence to being heretical; they have no connection 
with any effort to destroy the unity of the Church; 
they are not particularly convincing—especially the 
latter.t What exploded the Donation of Constan- 
tine as an historical document was a much longer 
process of examination and criticism, which does 
not reach its final conclusions till the seventeenth 
century. During that process you will find many 
who, after the breakdown of unity in the sixteenth 
century, were frankly enemies of the Church from 
without, not historical critics from within, using 
the unauthenticity of the Donation as a weapon for 
attacking the whole Catholic scheme; but I doubt 
if you will find one case of a believer who regarded 
the gradual establishment of the truth asin any way 
shaking the doctrine of Papal supremacy. Yet you 
have plenty of critics within the Catholic Church 
examining the problem in full liberty, and per- 
mitted to come to a right decision upon it. You 
have to-day, and you will have throughout the 
centuries to come, an indefinitely large body of men 


*For instance, he says there cannot have been a dragon under 
the Capitol because dragons are only found in Africa! 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 47 


with the fullest historical confidence, great scholars 
and experts in this particular point, who are fully 
convinced of the legendary character of the Dona- 
tion, and yet to whose minds it is inconceivable (as 
I confess it is to mine) that anyone should think the 
establishment of that historical detail a cause for 
doubt in the plain and most ancient doctrine of 
Roman supremacy with which it was for some six 
centuries out of twenty adventitiously connected. 

Now for the Galileo case. It is so continually 
quoted, it is so much the accepted type of such 
things, that I might be tempted to go into it at 
greater length; on the contrary, I shall deal with it 
more briefly, because the points at issue are as re- 
stricted as they are evident, and the complete mis- 
understanding upon which the accusation is based 
may be exposed by the most elementary statement 
of it. 

The accusation runs thus: ‘‘Galileo, having dis- 
covered by indubitable physical proof the motion 
of the earth, was condemned by the Catholic 
Church for stating the same, and her condemnation 
remained in force until the nineteenth century, when 
she was compelled to allow the matter to lapse.’ 

That assertion, the commonest made in all this 


48 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


department of historical attack upon the Faith, con- 
tains two elementary and decisive historical errors. 
First, the error that Galileo was condemned for 
teaching a then novel particular doctrine which he 
proved true; secondly, the error that Galileo was 
condemned by authority of the the Catholic Church 
upon a point of doctrine: that is, that the Catholic 
Church affirmed in the seventeenth century by her 
Infallible Authority as a point in doctrine that the 
earth did not move. 

In point of fact, Galileo’s condemnation did not 
turn upon his teaching a demonstrated truth, for it 
was not yet demonstrated. It did not turn upon a 
novel idea in Astronomy, but upon an hypothesis — 
which was already hoary before Galileo was born; 
and the condemnation was not originated against 
the idea as an hypothesis, but against the teaching 
of it as an established fact. So much for point one. 

Next, as to point two, the condemnation did not 
proceed from the Catholic Church. It proceeded 
from a particular disciplinary organ of the Catholic 
Church, with no authority whatsoever for finally 
establishing a point in doctrine. “To confuse it with 
Catholic definition of doctrine would be like con- 
fusing the definition of a New York court of justice 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 49 


with an amendment to the Constitution. The Pope 
himself, as it happened, forbade what would have 
been a grave error—though not one binding the 
Church—TI mean, a full definition of heresy by the 
inquisitors upon the matter. But all that is neither 
here nor there. ‘There was no definition binding 
upon Christians, and has been none, nor ever will 
be in such a purely mechanical affair. What there 
was was disciplinary action against a man who had 
done everything he could to provoke the constituted 
authorities of religion by querulous and bitter insult 
(he was a difficult character), a man who was un- 
able to support his own statements in court (noth- 
ing he brought forward at his trial came near to 
being conclusive on the motion of the earth, and 
much that he brought forward was fantastic) ,1 and 
the action came at the end of an upheaval in which, 
by exactly this kind of irrational, angry attitude in 
graver matters, the unity of Christendom had been 
destroyed. No wonder the authorities had grown 
touchy. Moreover, as anyone may see who reads 


1For instance, the absurdity about the tides, and the argument 
from the phases of Venus. 


50 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


the trial (and as Huxley saw), Galileo could not 
prove his case. It was still only an hypothesis, 

The theory that the earth was not fixed, but 
turning on its axis and moving round the sun, had 
not only been familiar (as I have said) to educated! 
Europe from long before Galileo was born, but had 
been taught with clerical approval as an hypothesis 
in Catholic universities; it was taught again in such 
universities not long after the Galileo trial as evi- 
dence accumulated, and became a commonplace of 
all teaching in Catholic schools and colleges long 
before the expunging of the Galilean treatise from 
the Index—always, and necessarily, a lengthy 
process. 

The whole attack on the Church in connection. 
with Galileo turns upon these two misunderstand- 
ings, of which the first is unessential, but the second 
capital: First, that a proved scientific fact was at 
issue; secondly, that this proved scientific fact was 
denied, because it was novel, and was denied by 
that authority which alone throughout the cen- 
turies had been held competent to establish points 

1 ““Educated’’ Europe meant a far larger body in Catholic times 


than it does now. Universities were then popular instituticns and 
their attendance was from every class, 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 51 


of doctrine, the Papacy and the councils of the 
Church over which it spiritually presides. The first 
is wrong and the second is wrong. “The Copernican 
theory was not novel in Galileo’s time; it was still 
only a theory. His condemnation accuses him of 
returning to the oldest conception (Pythagorean). 
He was not condemned by the Church, and the in- 
stance of his condemnation, such as it was, by the 
appointed committee, was his persistence in teach- 
ing as a proved fact what was still only hypothesis. 
- Before leaving this overemphasised historical de- 
tail, I would like to make clear to the modern 
reader what our modern confused habit of mind 
often fails to grasp: the difference between teaching 
a thing as demonstrated fact and teaching it as 
hypothesis, coupled with the difference between 
teaching demonstrated fact and teaching metaphys- 
ical or doctrinal conclusions supposedly, but erro- 
neously, dependent upon that fact. 

For that purpose I will choose a debate familiar 
to all our contemporaries: the discussion on the 
origins of the human body. 

In the last eighty years a very large and increas- 
ing body of evidence has been accumulated which 
points to the probability of the human body’s 


52 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


having come out of some original sub-human type, 
a sort of cousin to (though not descended from) the 
greater anthropoids of our own day. 

It may be so. ‘There is nothing in such an 
hypothesis against any Catholic doctrine. On the 
other hand, it is not proved. Still less is it proved 
that the process was of an inevitable sort uncon- 
nected with divine Creative Will. Least of all is it 
proved—and indeed, it cannot be proved, for the 
thing is manifestly contradictory to our senses— 
that man as we know him is not a fixed type, utterly 
different in quality from the beasts. 

Now this hypothesis is almost universally stated 
to-day as a demonstrated fact—which as yet it 
most certainly is not; indeed, the guesses at the 
process continue to change year by year, as anyone 
can see for himself by looking up the common 
manuals of forty, thirty, twenty and ten years ago. 

Further, there is quite commonly tacked on to 
it a second statement, that the so-called demon- 
strated fact disproves a cardinal Catholic doctrine, 
to wit, the Fall of Man. 

Now then, supposing a professor avowedly sub- 
ject to the Catholic discipline, professing in a Cath- 
olic society, were to teach (1) that the descent of 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 53 


the human body was what the last of our many 
successive guesses presumes it to be, and were to 
teach that as now certain and indubitable fact, 
comparable to the fact of the rotundity of the 
earth; (2) that this origin of the human body de- 
stroyed the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin. That 
professor would be condemned exactly as Galileo 
was condemned. He would be condemned not 
because the Church desired to assert that the human 
body was not of such hypothetical origin, but be- 
cause he had taught as certain what was uncertain; 
and he would be condemned upon the infinitely 
more important second point (which plain reason 
is sufficient to establish) that even if the hypothesis 
were already established by indubitable proof, it 
could not affect in any way the dogma of the Fall 
of Man: they are on different planes and concerned 
with totally different subjects. 

The doctrine of the Fall of Man is a trans- 
cendental doctrine. It affirms that man in his com- 
pleted nature was intended for a supernatural state, 
that his free-will rebelled against the will of God 
and that on this account his nature is fallen from 
a supernatural to a natural condition. To such a 
doctrine the discovery—if ever it should be made— 


54 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


as to how the body came to be is utterly indifferent. 
If I say, ‘““Young Smith was right enough till he 
took to drinking,’ it is no answer to tell me that 
Young Smith was once a baby who could not take 
to any evil, that he gradually grew up, and the 
whole process was one of increase and maturing, a 
““progress,’’ and that therefore Young Smith can’t 
have taken to drink. ‘That ‘‘can’t’’ is nonsensical. 
The process of becoming full grown is no bar to a 
moral fall. 

So much for the second of the moral arguments 
drawn from History. Let me turn to the third: 
That the Church cannot be divine because it is 
highly organised, with defined dogmas, a hierarchy, 
a whole machinery of rites and laws, whereas a 
divinely inspired thing would remain free and 
simple. 

(c) That the Church ts organised, therefore not 
of divine character. 

This last or third point made against the Church 
is one which haunts the greater part of modern 
minds with singular persistence. It is odd that it 
should do so; because, of all historical objections 
made to the Church, this is the least reasonable. 
But it is characteristic of the day in which we live 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 55 


that emotion should take the place of reason and 
a certain emotional bias towards an indefinite enthu- 
siasm (as in music) is a modern disease. 

The objection is that the Church is organised, 
whereas whatever is of divine authority on earth 
must (so it is presumed) be of a vague, inspirational 
sort without organisation or framework—-loose, 
attaching to the heart and imagination rather than 
to the intelligence. Such is the premise—and it is 
an enormity. 

For let it be supposed that there be upon earth 
one particular defined Divine Authority—such is 
the Church’s claim—-how would it necessarily act 
and be? What would of necessity be its structure? 

The reply is no positive argument in favour of 
that claim, but it is a conclusive negative argument 
in proof of the contention that if such a claim be 
true, then organisation and, as time proceeded, more 
and more minute and detailed organisation, would 
be an absolutely inevitable condition of action by 
such an authority. 

For consider carefully what the implications of 
such an authority are? 

Here we are on earth, possessed of certain general 
instincts of right and wrong—instincts commonly 


56 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


proceeding to very warped effects in action. We 
are surrounded by an infinity of varying circum- 
stances; our lives are brief; our power of inter- 
communication between individual minds is limited. 
Granted that there be some Corpus—some definable 
get-at-able person, place, or thing—from which 
absolute conclusions may be accepted; then that 
thing must be in the form of a society or otherwise 
it could not be continuous: it could not survive 
among ephemeral beings; it must have rules, or it 
could not bind beings imperfectly communicating; 
it must have habits, for it must be a living organism. 
Societies cannot live without differentiation of func- 
tion and definition thereof; separation of one 
activity from another; subordination in command; 
laws more and more defined; known symbols; rit- 
ual. If anything were designed to act as an institu- 
tion with divine authority among men—there might 
be no such design nor any such institution—but, I 
say, supposing there be such, then whatever was to 
act in this fashion must be a society, for it must be 
continuous; must be corporate, in order to over- 
come the imperfect connection between individual 
minds; must tend to more and more complete defi- 
nition in its character and being as time proceeds: 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 57 


for otherwise it would not have a human frame- 
work consonant to the human world for which it 
would be designed. 

Leave men in doubt as to who is and who is not 
a member of such a society; let it be uncertain by 
what tests membership may be recognised, acquired 
or lost, and the whole character and personality of 
the divinely appointed Thing disappears: with per- 
sonality disappears the faculty of diction, of affir- 
mation, for which (by definition) it was conceived. 
And, indeed, so you find the Church from its 
Origins: sacraments at once appearing, communion 
and excommunion, doctrine more and more defined 
as the generations pass and doubts or controversies 
arise, ritual embryonically present at its very outset 
and rapidly stabilised; from the beginning you have 
it certainly hierarchic, disciplined, bound in a strict 
framework; and still more certainly (if that be pos- 
sible) it shows limitation or outline, a frontier, a 
boundary—whereby any man may test who is 
within and who is without the Church. 

And if this be true of structure, it is still more 
obviously true of doctrine. Granted that there be 
such a society with a claim to infallible pronounce- 
ment upon the things essential to the satisfaction of 


58 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


the human soul, how can it proceed save by exact 
definition of its pronouncements? 

Begin with the vague and general, though per- 
haps intense, conviction that the soul survives death. 
Regard it not as a product of affection or of habit. 
Accept the mere intuition. What then? Does it 
survive as a person or not? ‘The thing is debatable. 
If it does not survive as a person, what connection 
is there between its survival and good or evil con- 
duct in this life? If it does survive as a person, how 
can such survival hold of our personality, which, 
being human, is manifestly of this changeable and 
material world? 

If it be said that no answer can be given to these 
questions, then we deny the existence of such an 
authority as I here presume. I do not say that 
these questions and the replies to them are a proof 
of the truth of such authority. I say that on the 
hypothesis that such an authority is to be found on 
earth, then necessarily it must of its very nature 
define doctrine upon such matters as these, pro- 
nouncement upon which is its whole reason for 
being. 

As each controversy of importance arises some 
new definition will necessarily be demanded of the 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 59 


authority. Therefore, though doctrine itself does 
not grow—for it concerns truths outside time— 
definition of doctrine will grow. The time in 
which we live has so largely lost the habit of clear 
thought that I must here admit a digression in order 
to emphasise and put in the sharpest light the differ- 
ence between the growth of doctrine and the growth 
of definition. 

Whenever a new definition is given by the Church 
—e.g., the definition of Infallibility in 1870, the 
definition of Transubstantiation in 1215—con- 
fused thinkers, or men who have not read the pro- 
ceedings, will assert that a new doctrine has been 
invented. A little attention to what passes at the 
time of such definitions should be enough to set 
them right. The whole debate turns upon the 
proof that the doctrine was present from the begin- 
ning and that innovation lies in the denial of it. 
The definition is a new thing to meet a new attack 
upon an ancient truth. ‘The truth is aboriginal. 
Definition no more makes new doctrine than does 
a new treatise on geometry make new mathematical 
truth. Such matters are expounded and elucidated 
in increasing volume; they are not invented. So it 
is with the Faith. 


60 ‘THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


From this, turn to another consequence of this 
objection to organisation in the Church: the objec- 
tion that its machinery and instruments of action 
are continually unworthy, base, insufficient, affected 
by worldly motives, and that therefore the claim 
of the Church to be divine fails. 

That the Church being organised and being 
human will suffer from defects inherent to all 
organisation and to all humanity is equally certain. 
There will be bad administrators, wicked men in 
holy charges, abuse of powers. But that is no 
answer to the claim of the Church. For consider— 
what is the alternative? | 

Supposing there be upon earth a definite body of 
some kind—corporation, society, officer, what you 
will: a definable existent Thing whereto men may 
turn for ultimate and certain pronouncements upon 
the chief matters of their concern (that is, the nature 
of man and his destiny). If that Thing, whatever 
form it were to be given, were not organised, then 
must affirmation clash with affirmation and what- 
ever were common to all would divide into a mere 
vague mood. 

Now such a mood does not fulfill the require- 
ments of the Thing in question. You may indeed 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 61 


say (the vast majority of English-speaking people 
are saying it to-day) that true religion is of this 
vague kind; an instinctive aspiration to unity with 
the Divine Will; most would even put it lower still 
and say “‘to unity with nature or the universe.’’ 
They therefore feel that all attempts to systematise 
this aspiration, to regulate the enthusiasm, to define 
particular dates and cases, to set up the machinery 
of a society with laws, officials and decision, is a 
warping of the only true living and direct religious 
impulse: and certainly if that original and vague 
religious impulse in man be the only true religion 
and if its value be in proportion to its vagueness, 
then organisation is a warping and a lessening of it. 

But remember that in making this statement you 
are denying at the outset the possibility of an 
authority and therefore contradicting the very affir- 
mation you make of some certain common truth in 
religion. For any authority beyond mere indi- 
vidual emotion (which changes in each individual 
and varies indefinitely among many individuals) 
must have a power of definition, must act with a 
function, and therefore must be organised in some 
degree. 

The choice is unavoidable between organisation 


62 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


in that which can speak with authority and the 
rejection of all claim to authority—which is the 
rejection of all common or general certitude on 
matters not immediately and universally apparent. 


In plain words, either you must admit organisation 
in your religion or say that no religion is true. 


I would like to make this argument quite clear, 
because the great majority of our contemporaries, 
at least in the English-speaking world, fail to make 


acquaintance with it. I do not say organisation 
proves the truth of the contention that the Church 


in particular is divine. I say that if there be such a 
thing as a divine Church on earth, that Church will 
be increasingly organised as the ages proceed, will 
perpetually define and re-define, will establish strict 
tests and will maintain its vitality by excluding 
what is not consonant to its nature; it will operate 
through differentiation of function as does every 
other living thing. It will have a multitudinous 
co-ordination of detail in proportion to the exalta- 
tion of its status, for only thus can it be alive with 
the supremely conscious life of the highest 
organisms. 

I say again, this is not an argument to the effect 
that organisation is a witness to divinity in the 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 63 


Church. It is an argument to the effect that if 
divinity speaks through any society, then the oracle 
of truth will present all the phenomena of organi- 
sation; and so far from these phenomena clashing 
with the religious instinct, they alone can give that 
instinct its full working value. 

In other words, you admit or you deny a Church. 
If you deny it, there is no certain source of truth 
present amid mankind; for the religious emotion 
of each man changes perpetually, and the emotions 
of each among so many millions differ from those 
of his neighbour. But if there be a Church, then 
organisation must necessarily be the very test of its 
reality, as it is the test of all the higher forms of life 
we know. 

When, therefore, we Catholics meet, as we do 
daily and in a thousand forms, such objections as: 
“If this dogma were true, it would be universally 
apparent’; “If that doctrine were part of the uni- 
versal truth, it would not be arrived at by special 
conclaves of particular men fulfilling highly defined 
functions and even dressed in a peculiar manner of 
their own’’; ““This elaborate definition of the Real 
Presence jars with true devotion to the Eucharist, 
which is a thing of the heart and a mystery beyond 


64 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


analysis,’ and so forth, in a myriad different forms 
of objection, we reply: “If, of mysteries such as the 
Eucharist or the continued life of man after death, 
or of the more familiar mysteries of personality, of 
time, of eternity, we have no definitions, then false- 
hood can be present and received as truth. ‘There 
is indeed no need to define, so long as all are im- 
plicitly agreed; but the moment one says (of the 
Eucharist, for instance), “There is a Presence here 
but it is spiritual only; the bread remains,’ then 
must, of necessity, the claimer to infallible truth 
(unless she is to nullify her own claim) lay down 
whether that proposition be true or not: whether 
the bread remains, or does not remain, after conse- 
cration. Otherwise two members of a society ex- 
isting to teach true doctrine will, on a fundamental 
and essential doctrine, be holding two contrary 
views, one of which at least must be false.’’ 

It would be easy to point to any number of other 
cases of more interest to the average modern man 
than the case of the Eucharist, in which he has lost 
all communion; for instance, to the mystery of 
immortality, and the discipline rather than the doc- 
trine of our attitude towards the dead. Two mem- 
bers of this society claiming infallibility are faced 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 65 


with the practice of necromancy, the calling up of 
the dead (a favourite pastime of our day among the 
wealthy). ‘The one feels in the strongest fashion 
that in this exercise he is upon the confines of posi- 
tive evil. He smells the Pit. The other is con- 
vinced that it is indeed the blessed dead who visit 
him and with whom he is in communion. 

Which is right? ‘The infallible authority can- 
not abdicate in such a crux without denying its own 
claim. There is no reconciliation of such a con- 
tradiction: it is Hell or Heaven. It must define and 
it does define; and we know on which side its 
definition lies. INecromancy—or Spiritualism as its 
modern name goes—is of Hell. 

In general, then, the moral arguments against. 
the Church as drawn from History—that is, from 
the record of its action—fail from one of two 
causes: either they misconceive the nature of the 
Church (what it is that speaks with Infallible 
Authority; on what it has spoken with Infallible 
Authority), or they are confused as to the implica- 
tions of religion, not perceiving that, if you are to 
admit any criterion of truth other than that of 
common experience, you must admit external 
authority; and that, once you admit an external 


66 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


authority in the final and all important questions, 
you admit a Church. 

_ Such considerations do not establish the claim of 
the Catholic Church, but they destroy certain par- 
ticular objections to that claim, drawn from the 
supposed clash between the moral character of the 
Church’s claim and the historical record of the 
Church making such a claim. 

From these I turn to what I have called the major 
objection of modern times: the intellectual objec- 
tion; the objection that History shows the structure 
of the Catholic Church to have proceeded from 
man. 


II. THE MAJOR OR INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENT 


The last and much the most important division 
of the arguments based upon History against the 
Catholic claim is, in general, the argument that the 
Church cannot be the divine thing it claims to be 
because it is in its essence demonstrably man-made: 
it is in its essence, and can be proved by History to 
be, of human institution, betraying all those char- 
acteristic illusions which man conjures up and im- 
poses upon himself in all his efforts to reach out 
to the unknowable and unattainable of his desire. 

This—by far the most serious historical form of 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 67 


attack upon the Faith—falls into two distinct 
branches, which I will call for the sake of brevity 
(without pretence to the full accuracy of the terms 
and certainly with no intention of using them 
abusively) the Protestant and the Pagan. I mean 
by the Protestant argument that argument against 
the Faith drawn from History which maintains that 
the Church has suffered fundamental corruption 
and has lost some presupposed original character 
through the increasing delusions of the human 
mind. I call the Pagan or purely Sceptical argument 
that which denies, on the testimony of History, 
that there ever has been a divine Church at all, or 
any clear revelation of divine things to men at any 
time or in however simple a form, and proposes 
to prove that all the doctrine of the Church is of 
man’s own making. 

These two I will take successively, maintaining 
the order I have throughout, to wit, attending to 
the least important before approaching the more 
important. 

I take it that in the times in which we live the 


Protestant objection, even in its vaguest form, is the 
less formidable. I shall take it first. I shall con- 
clude with what is, in my own judgment, far the 


68 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


most formidable attack at this moment, and likely 
to become still more formidable in the near future, 
the Pagan or purely Sceptical attack: the argument 
from History that all religion is man-made, that 
the Catholic Church must be included in the cate- 
gory of man-made things, and that therefore the 
Catholic Church has no claim to Divine Authority. 
(a) The Protestant argument from History. 
Throughout the story of the Catholic Church, 


i.e. during all the last nineteen hundred years,* 
there have continued recurrent protests against this 


or that doctrine: recurrent affirmations that some 
other doctrine, contrary to the authoritative defi- 
nition, is true, and that the authoritative definition 
is itself false. rom these denials and affirmations 
have proceeded what are called, in Catholic ter- 
minology, the various heresies. 

But towards the end of the Middle Ages these 
protests gathered together in a new form, which 
was essentially an appeal to History, and to their 
general character was applied the term “‘Protestant.” 
We need not quarrel over the term or its derivation. 
It has been, by universal agreement, applied during 
the last four hundred years. 


Taking the date of Pentecost as A. D. 29. 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 69 


‘The Protestant challenge to the Catholic Faith is 
essentially a challenge based upon History. It pro- 
poses to show by historical evidence that whereas 
there was some original body of true revelation, this 
has been distorted, corrupted and overlaid, and that 
the Catholic Church with its perpetual accretions 
of doctrine, ritual and office is more and more 
divergent from, or even contrary to, the divine 
_ original thus presupposed. 

The Protestant argument still exists even when 
it is put in its most vague and tenuous modern 
form. Even those who say, as do so many to-day 
(believing themselves to be pure sceptics) , “I accept 
the mission of Jesus Christ as salutary to mankind 
and as containing eternal verities, which it is essen- 
tial that man for his good should know; but I 
reject all supernatural statements in connection with 
this mission,” are still essentially Protestants.1 “Chey 


1Thus, a man who says, ‘‘While rejecting all dogmas and creed 
I revere the vaguer part of the traditional moral teaching of Jesus’’ 
is essentially a Protestant, not a sceptic, or Pagan: for such do not 
revere any part of our morals. Protestant also, not Pagan, is the 
man who confines himself to “the authentic teaching of Jesus’ 
freed from all later stories of the marvellous and all the sophistries 
of Theology, which ‘‘authentic teaching’ he picks out of the heap 
by his own infallibility. For the true sceptic or Pagan has no more 
use for the ‘‘authentic’’ fragments than for all the rest. He is 
equally indifferent to the whole, 


70 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


presuppose some original nucleus, however re- 
stricted on content and in time, which they postulate 
as good and true. 

The most extreme case—and to-day the most 
common one-——the case of the man who says he 
takes the four canonical Gospels, and these alone; 
that he rejects Pauline theology as a corruption, a 
man-made thing proceeding from the man Paul; 
that he rejects in the Gospels themselves every ele- 
ment which affirms or implies the miraculous 
powers of Jesus Christ, His claim to divinity, His 
Resurrection and the rest, is still a Protestant case. 
He affirms that the Sermon on the Mount (to which 
he is oddly attached) and sundry general propo- 
sitions upon humility, charity and other Catholic 
virtues, are good: and in saying that they are good 
he is saying that they are true. His quarrel is not 
with the whole Catholic scheme, but with every- 
thing in the Catholic scheme beyond what he has 
chosen for himself out of the mass of Catholic 
teaching. 

Now let us put down at the beginning of the 
debate one common element upon which all should 
be agreed: there has been development; and in so 


1 Heresy = Aipeois— ‘Picking and choosing.” 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 71 


far as development involves change, there has been 
in that sense, and in that alone, change. What is 
more, the development continues, and in so far as 
the word ‘‘change’’ may be applied to development, 
change continues.! 

The definitions of the Council of Trent are im- 
mensely more elaborate than the Apostles’ Creed; 
the Apostles’ Creed (probably dating from the 
eraliest origins of the Church though it does, and 
at the latest, in its essentials, a second-century 
Roman form) has more exact definition in it than 
the Gospel; the ritual of the Mass is not identical 
in every place; it is not identical through time. The 
Liturgy at once expanded and crystallised as the 
generations proceeded. Even within the brief space 
of a few centuries it is possible to point to portions 
of the Roman Mass (to take but one form) which 
began as voluntary or optional prayers and which 
became incorporated in the regular structure of the 
Sacrifice. One might even say that certain slight 


t Thus we say of a man of twenty-five that he ‘‘changes’’ into 
the man of forty. We also say of a man gone mad that he has 
“‘changed.’’ But the word ‘‘change’’ has two very different mean- 
ings in the two cases. In the one case it is change within the frame- 
work, of unity, of one character and personality. In the other it 
is the change against that unity, a rupture of it, 


72 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


additions of quite recent origin may, in the near 
future, follow the same course. “The bishop, the 
priest and the deacon of the original Church formed 
a far simpler body than does the vast organisation 
of the Hierarchy to-day, and new special worships 
of this saint or that, new shrines, and all the rest 
continually arise. “The argument in no way turns 
upon either side (for men of intelligence or in- 
formation) on so obvious and elementary a truth 
as that such development exists. It is common 
ground upon which both must proceed. Where 
they differ is upon the point whether or no such ~ 
development has introduced a fundamental change 
of character into the Catholic Church with the 
passage of the centuries. 

A parallel will explain what I mean. Two men 
observe a tree. One says, “‘It is an oak, in full vig- 
our’; the other says, ““No, it was of oaken origin, 
but there has been grafted upon it another growth 
and the whole is thus not only warped and trans- 
formed, but in my eyes diseased. It is not an oak.” 

The first man, who says, “It is a living oak 
consonant in all its parts,’’ does not deny that the 
acorn is different from the mature tree: the young 
sapling different in form from either the original 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 73 


acorn or the tree as it now appears. He does not 
deny that in a hundred years the form of the tree 
will seem to have changed still more; that in the 
fifty years past it has changed. What he denies is 
that there has been any change in that by which an 
oak is an oak. It is essentially the thing which it 
has always been. ‘That is his contention. Its 
growth is normal to its nature, and in so far as 
growth involves change, such change is the very 
proof of identity. 

His opponent denies this. He says it was an 
oak once, long ago, but other plants grafted on it 
have so changed its nature that it can be called an 
oak no longer. 

‘The appeal of the one is not to a supposed dead 
mechanical rigidity; it is not an affirmation that he 
has before him an acorn rather than an oak; it is 
to that principle of one-ness by which any thing is 
what it is. [he appeal of his opponent is not to 
the mere fact of change (at least he must be very 
unintelligent if that process destroy in his eyes all 
essential unity in the developing thing) ; it is rather 
to the proposition that the changes were of a dis- 
figuring and (to borrow a foreign word) “‘denatur- 
ing’ kind. The one says, “‘Here is the same original 


74. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


organism, in full health and strength, growing and 
vigorous before our eyes.’’ “The other says, ‘“These 
changes, which I can substantiate by the consulta- 
tion of old pictures and written records of the 
thing, are a proof of disease and of corruption.” 

It is therefore quite beside the mark for the op- 
ponents, upon historical grounds, of some particular 
institution essential to the Catholic Church—for 
instance, the Primacy of Peter—to prove by 
elaborate reference to record that the Papal power 
under St. Clement was embryonic compared with 
the Papal power under Innocent III. It is quite 
beside the mark to bring forward, at too much 
pains, evidence on, say, the doctrine of the Real 
Presence to prove that its definition in the Council 
of Trent is far more elaborate, exclusive and exact 
than the statement of it in Justin Martyr, fourteen 
hundred years earlier. “The point is that the one 
party to the controversy regards such change—if 
you like to call it change—as an inevitable and 
salutary phenomenon of life and a very proof of 
unity in character and time: the other, as a phe- 
nomenon opposed to the true life of the thing and 
a proof of its loss of identity with its original prin- 
ciple of life, 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 75 


Now in my view there are two tests which one 
may apply to what I have called the Protestant 
argument from History: two tests by which one 
may discover that it rings false. And these I would 
tabulate as follows: 

(1) The test of Innovation. 

(2) The test of Critical Date. 

By the test of Innovation I mean an historical 
' examination to discover whether orthodox doctrine 
—not points doubtful or still controversial within 
the Catholic body, but defined truth—as pro- 
pounded by the Catholic Church upon any given 
matter, at any given moment, had the character of 
an innovation, contrasting in essence with the de- 
velopment of the past; or whether on the contrary 
it was the denial of such doctrine, the counter- 
affirmation provoking such definition, which bore 
this character of innovation and novelty. If the 
first view be the true one, then the Catholic Church, 
false or true, has at least been in all its life one per- 
sonality consistent with its own essence, and the 
successive definitions have all been in the line of 
tradition. But if the opposing view be established, 
then indeed corruption and error and therefore the 


76 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


absence of her Infallible Authority have been 
proved. 

As to what I have called the test of Critical Date, 
I mean (what should be surely an obvious truth) 
that if the story has been a process of warping and 
corruption, there should be some discoverable stage 
at which this deflection began, and if the fixing of 
this stage be not only doubtful, but disputed in 
a hundred forms and set at widely separated epochs, 
differing by centuries, then the objection is ill- 
founded. 

I would not be so pedantic and at the same time. 
so logically weak as to demand of my opponent the 
fixing of a particular instant in which he discovers. 
error originating. All such things, whether true 
developments or corruptions, take place in time; 
none springs up apparent in a single moment. All 
grow. But I do say that if a plain historical phe- 
nomenon of corruption has taken place in this or 
that—for example, the doctrine of the Eucharist— 
its inception must be observable within at least a 
certain range of years, a generation at the most. 
Such is the test of Critical Date. 

I will now examine the matter by both these 
tests: Innovation and Critical Date, 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 77 


(1) As to the first test, it is historically true— 
and once again, a very strange thing—that in every 
single case it is the protest against orthodoxy which 
has had the character of an innovation, and never 
the orthodox affirmation which has appeared as a 
novelty. 

I will explain in a moment how an attempt 
might be made by our opponents to get over even 
this difficulty; but at any rate, as far as plain History 
is concerned, that remarkable fact which I have just 
stated is true. 

You may take the whole list, from Cerinthus, 
who was a contemporary of the Apostles, down to 
Brigham Young and his Mormons, or to the latest 
Modernist, and you find in every case without ex- 
ception the test working true. The heresiarch (as 
we Catholics call him) or the reformer, or prophet, 
or whatever other flattering term you may like to 
use in contra-distinction to heresiarch, appears as 
an innovator to the generation whom he disturbs, 
or to which he appeals. His doctrine comes as a 
new doctrine, with all the shock and also all the 
appeal of novelty. There is not any one case in the 
long story of the Church where we can trace a 
steady protest against any one of her fundamental 


78 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


doctrines, a protest appearing at the origins and 
increasing as the doctrine is more and more clearly 
defined. Nor is there any one case of a definition 
of orthodox doctrine appearing suddenly and with 
all the effect of an innovation. No doubt each 
reformer makes the claim that he has rediscovered 
the old original truth, long overlaid, but my point 
is that, when he and his doctrine appear, it is they 
—not the things they oppose—which invariably 
appear as sharp and, to most men, offensive 
novelties. 

I have called that phenomenon in the story of 
the Catholic Church remarkable; it is even startling. 
I know of no other society to which this aspect of 
reform or re-action applies. If you will consider 
for a moment the psychology of the affair, judging 
it by your personal knowledge of the way in which 
your own mind works, and the minds of the men 
about you, you will, I think, perceive its unique 
character. 

After all, what happens in our minds with re- 
gard to any form of degradation? For instance, 
what happens to-day with regard to a misquotation 
in literature or a warping of function in politics? 

The first misquotation takes place, and is chal- 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 79 


lenged. The bad habit grows, but it is still 
challenged here and there: the challenge is main- 
tained. Each time it is challenged the error is 
admitted, but unfortunately spreads. Sometimes 
there comes at the end of the process a violent 
re-action; literary men swarm together (as it were) 
and insist upon the misquotation being driven out; 
and sometimes they succeed. 

Or again, as to the warping of a political insti- 
tution. Representative institutions were founded 
to be representative. People soon find out that they 
are only imperfectly representative: that they tend 
to represent the avarice or vanity of the individual 
delegates much more than the mandate of those 
who sent them to the representative assembly. 
What happens? Immediate protest; repeated pro- 
test; attempts at reform. Sometimes the reform 
makes good, the fear of God is put into the poli- 
ticians, and the representative institution is purged 
and brought up with a round turn, and compelled 
to do its duty. 

You may take the whole range of human action 
in this respect, and you will invariably find a 
process of this kind. It is common sense. Men do 
not allow their conception of a thing to be deflected 


80 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


by falsehood or laziness or illusion without sharply 
re-acting against that deflection. All History is full 
of the corruption of institutions—and of men; but 
all History is most emphatically not full—in fact, 
in all History you will not find an example—of the 
corruption taking place without its being noted and 
resisted, 

Now here, in the case of Catholic doctrine, you 
have the singular fact that the process is the other 
way about. There is no protest till after the doc- 
trine has become fixed. “Take the case of the doc- 
trine of the Incarnation. Whether true or false, it. 
is certainly present before Cerinthus. The man 
who most violently combats Cerinthus’ statement 
that Our Lord suffered as man and not as God is 
one of our Lord’s own companions, St. John—a 
witness who had known Our Lord on earth, which 
Cerinthus never had. That is no proof that the 
doctrine is true; but it is proof of the historic fact 
that Apostolic society believed in the doctrine and 
that the first heresy in the matter was an innovation. 

Or take the doctrine of the Eucharist. For cen- 
turies the Real Presence was accepted; in general 
terms, it is true, but accepted none the less. You 
get it unmistakably from the Words of Institution 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 81 


right on for a thousand years. You can argue 
against the intention of the early statements based 
upon the words of institution. You can say that 
those who first alluded to the Eucharist did not 
intend the full doctrine of later times. You can 
say that the Words of Institution in the Gospel were 
only used by Our Founder metaphorically. You 
may say that the famous description of the Mass in 
Justin Martyr nearly eighteen hundred years ago did 
not connote the exact doctrine of Transubstantia- 
tion. You may quote (as Cranmer did) passages 
from St. Augustine which permit the special pleader 
to use them (if he leaves out the context and refuses 
to mention other passages) as evidence of a subjec- 
tive rather than an objective Presence. But the 
plain historical fact remains that there is not one 
single protest heard during all the centuries during 
which the Christian Church did take the Real Pres- 
ence for granted, and built up round that accepted 
doctrine the whole mass of the Liturgy in East and 
West. It remains true that you can find no resist- 
ance against this universal attitude. “Though there 
is metaphysical discussion, there is not a case of a 
man saying, ‘“The original doctrine was not that of 


82 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


Real Presence: such doctrine is a corruption only 
just introduced, and I protest against it.”’ 

When the protest comes it is after thirty genera- 
tions, at the end of the Dark Ages; and it produces 
a violent effect of innovation, of novelty. 

I submit that no matter what particular defined 
doctrine in the Catholic scheme you may select, you © 
will find without exception this most notable char- 
acter attaching to it, that when denial of it was 
made within the Christian community—as when 
Arius denied the consubstantiality of the Son, or as 
when Nestorius denied the divine motherhood of 
Our Lady— it had the effect of a stone thrown at a 
pane of glass and breaking it: the startling effect of 
a shock; of something quite unexpected and exceed- 
ingly and unpleasantly new. 

I myself who am writing this did, when I was a 
young man and very imperfectly instructed, take 
for granted the opposite. I thought, for instance, 
that the doctrine of the Trinity had very slowly 
arisen, that an original ignorance of Our Lord’s full 
divinity was gradually dispelled by the develop- 
ment of the doctrine; that the earlier the evidence 
was, the less it would confirm the doctrine; and 
that Arius was fighting a sort of rear-guard action: 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 83 


defending a cause which had once been vigorous 
but was lapsing through the process of time. I 
thought that; and I fancy most ordinary educated 
men who have not had the leisure or desire to read 
the evidence in detail think something of that sort 
with regard to the story of almost any one of the 
Christian mysteries. For, after all, the process is 
exactly what one would expect. One would expect 
any original statement in human affairs to be com- 
monplace and straightforward, and the supernatural 
interpretation of it to come in by a process of accre- 
tion and illusion such as creates the innumerable 
legends and myths of mankind: first the teacher is 
a revered men, then vaguely thought to have some- 
thing in him of the divine, then to be some sort of 
divine being, and, lastly, a God. 

It was when I came to read the evidence and look 
closely into the matter for myself that I began to 
feel the surprise which I record here and which any 
one of my readers will also feel if he will read the 
actual evidence instead of guessing at what sounds 
most probable. The evidence is clear that the 
Trinitarian doctrine, growing in definition, was 
never put forward with novel and protested accre- 


84 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


tions. It was the Arian challenge which was new 
and immediately resisted. 

It is the same with the mystery of the sacrament. 
Let anyone who believes the doctrine of the Real 
Presence in the Eucharist to have grown up very 
gradually as a sort of legend or myth, an accretion 
overlaying some originally straightforward and in 
no way mysterious ceremony, read the words in 
which the earliest writers who refer to the matter 
at all speak of it. Let him not only read the way 
in which they speak of it, but the way in which 
they acted. When that young boy in the streets of © 
Pagan Rome allowed himself to be killed rather 
than show to the profane What he carried veiled 
in his hands, it is evident that he did not think it 
common bread. When we find in all the very 
earliest evidence of Liturgy insistence upon and 
repetition of the mystery, it gives us to think. [I 
say again, for the twentieth time, as I have said at 
so many other points in this debate, ali-this is not 
a proof of the truth of the doctrine, but it is a proof 
that the historical process with regard to the doc- 
trine is not that of corruption and essential change 
which our opponents have presumed it to be. It is 
a proof that, true or false, the mystery of the sacra- 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 895 


ment now held was originally held, and that the 
attack upon this doctrine, as upon any other, came 
as a novelty. 

I have said that even this phenomenon, unpar- 
alleled as it is in the tale of human thought, was 
capable of explanation by an opponent. But | 
think if we examine that explanation we shall find 
it to fail. 

The explanation is as follows: You are dealing 
with a body of fervid believers. As time proceeds 
the excesses, the delusions, the vagaries, proceeding 
from their very enthusiasm, permeate their body 
insensibly, and it is only when the process has gone 
a considerable length that, with a shock, some 
strong and lucid brain confronts the deluded with 
reality. Hence (it is said) the novelty of each 


heresy and the startling effect produced by the first 
statement of each heretical proposition. This is 


certainly true of abuses, as for instance the abuse of 
image worship, when it came to such a pitch that 
men accepted without question a mass of images, 
supposed to have appeared in some miraculous 
fashion without human workmanship. And if it 
be true of abuses which are recognised to be abuses 
by all, why should it not be true of fundamental 


86 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


doctrines, considering the blind fervour of which 
I have spoken and the natural consequences of such 
fervour? 3 

My answer to that explanation is that the cases 
are not sufficiently numerous to establish a rule. It 
is true that you do get some few cases, very few, of 
abuses which proceed some way before they are 
abolished. But they do not go on long without 
being pulled up, nor are they so general and mani- 
fold as to militate against our judgment that, almost 
in proportion to its importance, the doctrine or 
mystery, when it is challenged, is challenged by a 
new force. 

Moreover, there is this consideration. In the few 
cases where there is the analogy of an admitted 
abuse somewhat tardily reformed, all in the Church 
ultimately accept the reform. But this is not at all 
the case with regard to the main orthodox doctrine 
—quite the other way. 

In every historical case of abuse, whether it be 
the erroneous acceptation of a false document (as in 
the case of the Donation) or an abuse of excess, as 
in the case of the exaggeration of image worship, 
the traditional forces of this Sacred Society admit 
the moral or clerical error, and usually they begin 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 87 


to admit it in increasing numbers from the moment 
of the first challenge. But in the case of orthodox 
doctrine it is not so. It is just the contrary. It is 
the doctrine that stands and the heresy which gradu- 
ally dies out. 

Of specific heresies which have attempted to 
maintain but a part of truth while rejecting the 
rest, all without exception have gone through a 
process of rapid growth, culmination and decay, 
and nearly all have at last wholly faded. ‘That is 
not true, of course, of pure scepticism. That we 
shall always have with us, for it is native to the 
human mind. A complete denial of the whole 
Catholic scheme, that is, a complete rejection of all 
that is unfamiliar and does not repose upon evi- 
dent proof immediately acceptable to everyone; a 
denial of all mystery and especially of specific doc- 
trinal affirmation, is as natural to man as breathing, 
for faith is of grace and is exceptional to Nature. 
But the heresies, as distinguished from such general 
rationalist denial, never have in them the vitality 
which continues to urge orthodox tradition. 

That is historical fact; and it is an historical fact 
which should give every man who is seriously 
examining these things grave food for thought. 


88 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


Take the example which is most familiar to the 
older members of the present generation in English- 
speaking countries other than Ireland: I mean, the 
attitude towards Holy Writ. 

Here heresy began by setting up the literal inter- 
pretation of Scripture (and the personal judgment 
of the reader upon it) in opposition to the author- 
ity of the Catholic Church. The Catholic tradition 
in the matter was that (1) Scripture was the Word 
of God; but (2) given us not as a record of science, 
or even History, so much as a witness to the Church 
and particularly to the Incarnation; and (3) was. 
only to be accepted in the sense which the authority 
of the Catholic Church admitted. 

As against that ancient Catholic attitude towards 
the Bible came, as a novelty, the fierce affirmation of 
its absolute and literal authority and of its being 
plainly interpretable for himself by every reader. 

We are all witnesses to what has happened in 
that particular example. 

‘The heresy, after nearly three hundred years of 
vigour, has gone to pieces. “The Bible outside the 
Catholic Church has lost authority. “The original 
Catholic position remains. Indeed, there is a comic 
irony in noting that it is we Catholics to-day who 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 89 


are thought old-fashioned in maintaining our 
respect for the text of Scripture and in being slow 
to admit all the modern guess-work in derogation 
of it. So much for the test of Innovation. 

(2) I turn to the second test, the test of Critical 
Date. 

If it be true that the Catholic Church is the 
warping and corruption of an originally delivered 
truth, then that warping and corruption must have 
had an origin. 

I am walking by night along a road which is 
laid out upon the map for miles due east and west; 
but after so walking for some time I begin to notice 
by the stars that the road is bending. It turns 
more and more southward. The map has misled 
me. In such a case I can, when daylight returns, 
retrace my steps and I shall find the point of flexion. 
I may not be able to establish it to a yard, nor even, 
if the process be at first very gradual, to a quarter 
of a mile; but I shall at least be able to say, “‘Up to 
this point it was dead straight, pointing west. 
After this point (say, as much as a mile further on) 
it is clearly bending south of west, and I find it 
bending more and more southward as I proceed.”’ 


90 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


If not a point at least a section of flexion can be 
established. 

Now there is this remarkable historical fact 
about the process of the Catholic Church—that its 
Protestant opponents, all agreeing in its loss of 
direction, cannot agree as to when that loss began. 
There is not and apparently cannot be any general 
conclusion upon so simple an historical matter as 
to even the main historical section—first century, 
second, third, fourth, eleventh—in which this point 
of flexion lies. For one body of Protestant thought 
it is found in what they call “‘Counter-Reforma- 
tion’”’ of the sixteenth century. It was then that 
the Catholic Church went wrong, with its exag- 
geration of Papal power, cf Eucharistic ritual, its 
more mechanical organisation of the Sacrament of 
Penance, and all the rest of it. In the fifteenth cen- 
tury the Church of England, of France, of Castille 
were all (rightly) in communion and their common 
authority was sound. By 1600 it was lost. For 
another set of Protestants the change was the open- 
ing of the Middle Ages—what is called the “‘Hilde- 
brandine Movement” of 1050-85. Until then 
Christendom was proceeding in consonance with its 
tradition. The see of Peter had Primacy indeed, 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 91 


but had not developed a highly detailed jurisdiction 
over a vast number of personal and national affairs. 
The discipline of celibacy among the clergy in the 
West (so they tell us) had been optional; its uni- 
versal enforcement was acorruption. “The monastic 
institution had been free and sincere; it slowly 
became, after that date, enslaved to the Papal power 
and to Mammon, and was more and more a scandal 
of insincerity. Others would find the point of 
departure in the ignorance and loss of material 
powers which mark the entry into the Dark Ages. 
The fifth and sixth centuries are the wide sections 
in which to seek the point of flexion and of decline. 
Others are willing to accept as traditional and on 
the right line the Christendom of Gregory the Great 
and St. Augustine of England; but the ninth cen- 
tury is a breaking point and the tenth a final col- 
lapse; by the time of Marozia the Church had 
clearly lost an original character which it never re- 
covered, and that new and degraded thing, the 
mediaeval Church, had begun to appear. The 
Church was never more the same. For some few 
of my own acquaintance the dreadful moment is 
1870; the right way was lost with the definition of 
the Infallibility of the Pope. For others again it 


92 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


is the thirteenth century, with its developing organi- 
sation for the repression of heresy and its too strict 
definition of the sacrament. For a very great body 
of men in the immediate past (now a smaller 
number) things began to go wrong with the free- 
dom of the Church under Constantine. Then did 
lay and state corruptions, imitations or influences 
of the old Pagan society, begin to thwart the divine 
scheme. 

The most popular of the latest Protestant the- 
Ories is that the thing went wrong almost at once 
between Pentecost and the predication of St. Paul, 
and that St. Paul was the author of the evil trans- 
formation into a mystery religion of what had 
before been an ethical society upon the suburban 
model. As their phrase goes, “‘Nothing can bridge 
the gulf between the Gospels and the Pauline 
writings.”’ A lifetime ago the point of flexion was 
put later. In the Protestant thesis of the mid-Vic- 
torian day the corruption began about the end of 
the second century. St. Paul was accepted, but 
already there was trouble beginning, as revealed in 
the authentic epistles of St. Ignatius; and manifestly 
things were becoming Catholic (and therefore cor- 
rupt) by the time of the African Martyre, and were 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 93 


hopeless by the time of the Thirty Tyrants. For 
these scholars the Catholic taint is the natural 
accompaniment of the decline of civilisation after 
the Antonines. 

Now I am not saying that because there is dis- 
pute upon the moment of flexion in any directive 
scheme, because there are debate and diverse opinion 
upon the point where an upright original began to 
- go wrong, that therefore one may conclude it never 
did go wrong. But I am free to maintain that such 
enormous disparities of opinion, and such a cease- 
less shifting of it, would be impossible if a plain 
historical process were at work. 

When we consider, for instance, the popular 
monarchy of the English, that is, the government 
of England by a king, aided indeed by other powers, 
but having in his own hand the main force of the 
executive, there may be some debate as to the mo- 
ment in which these powers began to fall off, until 
they reach the purely symbolic or nominal situation 
in which they are to-day, when the king no longer 
governs at all but is the neutral chief of society. I 
myself should put it as early as the reign of 
Edward VI, and I should say it had become marked 
under the elder Cecil at the beginning of Elizabeth’s 


94 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


reign. It is more usual to say that the great 
change came under Charles I, and certainly it was 
clinched by the civil wars. [here are even per- 
haps some who maintain that monarchy was still 
in the main more powerful than any other political 
factor until the Dutch invasion of 1688. But at 
any rate it lies within these two lifetimes—1550 to 
1690. No one will deny that the process had be- 
gun in the latter half of the sixteenth century; no 
one will deny that it was thoroughly accomplished 
before the end of the seventeenth. 

It is so with all other historical phenomena of 
the kind. You can put within the limits of a life- 
time, and not a very long lifetime, the transforma- 
tion and decline of the Roman Empire during the 
third century. You can see clearly that feudalism 
was a living social system under Henry III of Eng- 
land and even under Edward I, but that it was no 
longer the spiritual motive of society after the Black 
Death. You may take any process you like 
throughout History, and you will find this to be 
true; not that you can always put your finger upon 
a particular year or event, let alone a particular 
moment, but that you can say, ““Within this com- 
paratively narrow limit of time the change takes 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 95 


place, certainly the institution was living within its 
traditions and in the direction determined by its 
originals as late as such and such a moment; cer- 
tainly after such and such a moment, not long sub- 
sequent, it is as clearly failing to keep that original 
direction.” 

But here, in the case of the Catholic Church, her 
opponents can say nothing of the kind. If they 
could, not only would scholarship be roughly 
agreed among our opponents as to the Critical Date, 
but we ourselves should at last be agreed, as we are 
agreed with regard to attack upon abuses, in the 
long run—though never with regard to the attack 
on doctrine. 

But there is no such agreement, and can be none; 
for the simple reason that the Catholic Church has 
not thus warped or veered but has remained her- 
self. So by this second test I conclude that the 
historical objection is false. 

It seems to me that an impersonal observer, say 
some historical student from the extreme Orient, to 
whom the whole Catholic scheme was indifferent 
and who cared nothing whether the original insti- 
tution of the Catholic Church had failed (because 
he had no affection for that institution and no belief 


96 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


in any of its doctrines nor any respect for Jesus 
Christ nor any attachment to the idea even of a per- 
sonal God)—it seems to me, I say, that such a 
wholly neutral observer would, upon the general 
historical evidence, decide that the Catholic Church 
was founded with a certain directive nineteen hun- 
dred years ago, to be correct, about the year 29, and 
had remained throughout the successive centuries 
consonant with itself. I think he would say of it 
what we cay say with regard to many an ancient 
state, “Its personality has survived, its soul is still 
the same, its essential unity has not been lost.’’ He 
would add the qualification “‘yet’’; he would con- 
clude, ““The personality yet survives; the continu- 
ous life has not yet been lost.’’ We of the Faith of 
course afirm—but not upon historical evidence— 
that the word yet does not apply; that it shall 
remain to the consummation of the ages. But for 
the purposes of the particular argument which I am 
here examining, that is neither here nor here. I 
say that a mere historical examination with no 
reference to the truth or falsehood of the Church’s 
claim will conclude that that claim has been con- 
tinuous from the beginning, and that the Thing 
to-day is essentially what it was when the strict 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 97 


organisation, the unique phenomenon, appeared in 
Syria under the principate of Tiberius. There is 
nothing left contemporary with that still vigorous, 
still well-favoured, ancient Thing. It has seen the 
disappearance of everything in Europe save itself, 
and its spring still copiously flows. 

(b) The Sceptical or Pagan objection from 
History. 

I have said that much the most important form 
of historical attack upon the Catholic position, the 
most formidable, and to-day the most hardly 
pressed, the most lively and the most universal, is 
the Pagan or purely Sceptical, the definition of 
which I will here repeat. 

It is maintained that the claim of the Catholic 
Church to Divine Infallible Authority is baseless, 
because it is manifestly man-made. ‘The process of 
reasoning is as follows: 

Man is to be discovered in history perpetually 
making gods, erecting religious themes, constructing 
cosmogonies. It is in his nature thus to project 
himself upon the universe and to take his imagina- 
tions for realities. His gods are but large reflected 
images of himself; his religious doctrines, from the 
petty myths of a small savage tribe to the majestic 


98 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


fabric of Catholicism, are one and all upon the same 
model. Each is false, for each differs from the rest; 
and all are false, for all are compact of the same stuff 
as the others: a stuff bearing plainly the marks of 
human emotion and human construction. Now 
this prophet is deified, now that chief, now that 
other imaginary figure, half legendary or perhaps 
wholly without historical existence; and what is 
true of any one of these is true also of the Catholic 
scheme. ‘The deification of its Founder is an exam- 
ple of deification like any other. Its elaborate the- 
ology is but a somewhat more developed specimen 
of what men have done before us and will do after 
us—a spinning of logical systems into the void on 
premises that are without substantial basis. Its 
affirmations of the miraculous are of the same 
legendary sort as those to be discovered in a thou- 
sand other forms; its ritual can be proved to have 
cousinship in this point or in that with many an- 
other ritual of sacrifice, expiation and the rest: the 
very details of its liturgical life, the mere ornaments, 
the host of practices, the great monastic institutions, 
the pretty small devotions of light and ornament— 
all these are of one material. That material has 
been exhaustively examined and is now historically 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 99 


known. A vast mass of evidence has been accumu- 
lated and continues to accumulate. The more it is 
co-ordinated the more clearly this conclusion 
appears. 

That is the position we have to meet. That is 
the main historical argument against the divine 
origin and authority of the Church of God. 

Our fundamental answer to such a position is of 
course not historical at all. It is the answer of 
faith; as though a man should say, ‘““Yes, this stone 
is a stone and there are multitudes of stones, but I 
believe this particular stone to be a talisman.’’ Or 
as though he should say, ‘“Yes, this Man was a man, 
and there have been countless millions of men; but 
this one Man, and this one Man only, was also 
God.”” The rational basis (not the positive proof) 
of such a reply is based upon spiritual experience— 
upon our judgment after noting the world, its 
reactions towards the Faith, and the effects of the 
Faith upon it, that here if anywhere is the divine; 
a conclusion coupled with our further judgment 
that somewhere there must be present upon earth 
the visible action of the divine acting in corporate 
fashion through some institution, some society, 
some body. 


100 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


But this main argument does not concern the 
little essay which you are reading. I am dealing 
only with the value of the historical argument 
against the Faith, as I have put it, I think fairly, 
into the lips of one of our typical, modern, well- 
read opponents. 

Now what is our reply? 

Our reply is that the generalisation is hasty and 
inaccurate, and that the more you examine it the 
more you discover upon what a false and super- 
ficial basis it reposes. : 

There is not a great number of religions, nor has 
there been in the past a greater number, apparent 
to men of different nations and temperaments, of 
which hotchpotch the Catholic Church is but one. 
There is not a multitude of systems of theology 
falling under the one general category ‘‘theologies,’’ 
of which the Catholic scheme is but a single speci- 
men. Upon the contrary, there is, and has been 
for these centuries past, a social and religious phe- 
nomenon unique and comparable to nothing else, 
called the Catholic Church. Its spirit, quality, 
voice, personality is such that the line of cleavage 
does not lie between it and pure scepticism, leaving 
on the one side all religions (including Catholicism), 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 101 


and on the other the free uncertain mind; the line 
of cleavage lies between the Faith upon one side and 
all other human opinions and moods upon the 
other. And this unique character of the Catholic 
Church is as plain an historical truth as the astro- 
nomical truth of the reverse rotation of Uranus is 
unique among the planets. It claims what no other 
society has ever claimed. It affirms its Founder to 
have been what no other society claims its founder 
to have been. It functions as no other society has 
functioned: by an unsupported authority, absolute 
in its affirmation. 

It may indeed be granted that in pure theory at 
least there is an equal alternative to the unique 
thing. One might say that, outside the Catholic 
Church, the human mind can stand quite unat- 
tached, examining all things by no criterion save 
common experience and the deductive power of the 
intelligence. In pure theory there might be a whole 
society of such detached (but also quite unrooted) 
minds with no certitudes, no ethical predicates, 
living upon the void. 

In practice that is not so. ‘There is not one of 
us that can point to any mind of his acquaintance, 
or to any mind appearing through the pages of a 


102 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


book which occupies such a position. All without 
exception betray an ethical theory of some kind, 
that is, doctrines which, though the holder of them 
may refuse to formulate them, appear in his actions. 
Every man is a theologian. Every man has his phi- 
losophy of the world. And viewing man thus as 
he is, always a member of some group, we do not 
discover as an historical phenomenon any group 
save that of the Catholic Church which possesses 
the unique character of authority. Conversely, we 
find in all other groups the well-known marks 
attached to men in all forms of worship—tites, 
doctrines, disciplines: we find in Catholicism similar 
phenomena; but we do not find in any of the other 
groups, into which men’s attempts at satisfying this 
religious sense may fall, that particular mark in 
which Catholicism is quite different from all the 
rest, 

Let us turn to the historical evidence on the 
matter and see how true this is, prefacing that 
examination by the reiterated remark that such 
unique quality does not of itself and unsupported 
by other considerations determine the mind to accept 
the authority of the Faith, but remarking that it 
does provide a presumption stronger than our 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 103 


modern world, even its small educated part, is 
generally aware of. 

In the first place, is it true that there are a mass 
of religions bearing for their chief characteristic that 
which is the chief characteristic of the Catholic 
Church—a secure, unfailing and constant affirma- 
tion of Infallible Authority? 

No; it is not true. There have been many 
restricted, some (very few) widespread religious 
systems; to-day there are two in especial—the 
Buddhist, the Mohammedan, occur at once to mind; 
but not one of them makes this particular Catholic 
affirmation, Mohammedan society, not a new re- 
ligion but essentially an offshoot and degradation 
of the Christian, taking the Catholic doctrine and 
simplifying it to its last rudiments (with the excep- 
tion of all in it that demands faith in mystery), is 
passionate for a certain way of life and intolerant 
of others. It creates a very marked and special cul- 
ture which no doubt could claim in its own way to 
be historically unique, just as the culture of the 
Chinese is historically unique. But Islam does not 
come forward with the statement, “I am a society 
of divine foundation possessed of the power to 
reply to question after question upon the only 


104 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


things that really matter, to which questions man 
has never yet of himself attained an answer.’ It 
says indeed, ‘‘This is the way to live; and in this 
way of living we are content. A disturbance of it 
is odious to us, and we desire as much as we can to 
turn all others into our own image—not only the 
religious, but the social habits of men offend us 
where very different from our own.” But it does 
not and cannot of its nature say, “‘Here alone 
through this defined organisation is the voice of 
God perpetually speaking, settling controversies, 
defining and re-defining in ever-expanding area of | 
thought whatever truths may be challenged.” It 
is alive, but it is not alive with a life of develop- 
ment; and so far from presenting any organisation 
through which its doctrine can be developed as well 
as affirmed, it is specifically repugnant to such 
organisations. In a phrase, Mohammedanism is 
essentially anti-clerical. 

If it be true of Mohammedanism (the chief his- 
torically active opponent of the Faith) that it has 
not the peculiar marks which make the Catholic 
Church different from any other society in the 
world, that it has not some major quality by which 
all religions are distinct and which is also the major 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 105 


quality of the Catholic Church, that statement is 
still more true of Buddhism. 

Buddhism never pretended to make, and does not 
make to-day, an affirmation to be accepted cor- 
porately by the universal world. It presents a cer- 
tain philosophy—which I cannot but call the phi- 
losophy of despair, and which is quite certainly a 
philosophy of negation. It presents this gloom for 
acceptation by the individual mind. But it claims 
no corporate rule; it affirms no divine authority: it 
enjoys no functional power of excretion nor any 
of assimilation. You cannot say of Buddhism, 
“Here is orthodoxy and the living tradition search- 
ing out heresy and denouncing it, maintaining its 
life triumphantly by insistence upon a personality 
of its own and by a corresponding power of attack 
against whatever would diminish or threaten that 
life.”’ 

If we turn from the great systems to the local 
worships we find another character, wholly separate 
from that apparent in Catholicism: that they do 
not pretend to certitude; they pretend to no more 
than the satisfaction of emotion and to a corpora- 
tion tradition. They have their myths, but will 
readily accept them as myths or compare them un- 


106 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


offended with the myths of others. They have 
their sanctities: but their sanctities make no pretence 
at all to be universal. There was one, and only 
one, historical phenomenon, which in this point did 
compare with the Faith—the phenomenon of the 
Jewish religion; and that is precisely why we Cath- 
olics call the Jewish religion the forerunner of our 
own and the preparation of the world for its Incar- 
nate God. 

But is it not true that there are countless cere- 
monies and also major doctrines, comparable to and 
some even nearly identical with those of the Faith? 

It is; and to that we answer that if there is to be 
such a thing as the Faith on earth, it could not but 
be so. If men must worship, they will worship in 
places. If men feel the pull of a religious emotion, 
at once the sacramental idea must enter in. “There 
cannot but be a connection between the physical life 
of man and any religious system whatsoever, true 
or false, with which he is inmixed. And so surely 
as the ministers of the true religion will breathe and 
eat and walk upon their feet, each as much as the 
ministers of the false, so surely you will find in a 
true religion, if true religion there be, habits, prac- 
tices, doctrines, which (not all combined, but here 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 107 


one, there another) men have groped for or arrived 
at in systems which attempted or adumbrated the 
truth, but did not even claim to be the full truth. 

It is not an historical argument against the 
divinity of this one thing that it has the qualities 
which human things must have. Upon the con- 
trary, it isan argument in favour of its claim. 

That the unique object here displayed, the Cath- 
olic Church, is divine cannot on this account be 
affirmed; but it can be affirmed that if such a unique 
object exist, then it will have these characters 
attaching to it. 

A man making a survey of what little is known 
of the old religious experiments and perversions of 
mankind, and being asked, as a pure hypothesis, 
“Suppose a divine society, corporate, distinct, 
highly organised, and therefore of highly differen- 
tiated function, were to arise on earth to bear wit- 
ness to the Living God: suppose such a thing for 
the sake of argument only, what, think you, would 
such a body present by way of appearance, action 
and thought?” could not but answer that it would 
have of necessity present within it not only vital 
truths, but also practices discoverable wherever man 
had groped at or half remembered a revelation. 


108 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 


This man, with no knowledge of such a society, 
but considering what his fellow beings were, what 


the human mind is, what questions it poses, what 
answers it demands, would reply: “‘In that society 
you would discover the worship of a Creator, the 
affirmation that he had revealed himself; a mysteri- 
ous link between the divine and the human, com- 
parable to the link between the unthinking matter 
of our bodies and the living essence within. It 
would have sacrifice and veneration combined. It 
would sanctify objects, places, persons and rites; it 
would have central institutions, and in proportion 
to its vitality a multitude of lesser activities; it 
would have symbols which it would distinguish 
from realities and forms of reality which it would 
attach to symbols; for man without a soul is a 
corpse, and man without a body is a wraith. This 
supposed society which you bid men imagine would 
certainly present in their highest form such elements 
as History has also discovered, disjointedly appear- 
ing, often perverted, often degraded, in the various 
(and ineffective) spiritual experiments or lapses of 
mankind.” 

Then, one might say to such a man, such a gen- 
eral scholar and observer of the unique animal, man, 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 109 


at prayer, “Should there conceivably be such a home 
upon the earth, how otherwise would you know 
it?’’ He could but answer, “Its nature would be 
such that it would satisfy to the full the demands 
of men; it would be unique so as to correspond to 
man himself who is unique on earth, and it would 
grant him fulness and repose.” 

Such and such alone is the Catholic Church. If 
it be not what it claims to be, then all is void. 


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